


Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

by Horatio_Jaxx



Series: The Starcorp Adventures [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:33:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 40
Words: 151,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27178615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Horatio_Jaxx/pseuds/Horatio_Jaxx
Summary: In the 22nd century, an economic disparity has partitioned humans into two opposing camps, Earthers and Spacers. Fear and hatred are the emotions that sustains the divide. In the minds of some, the Sol System is not big enough for them both, and most of them believe that war is inevitable. For the Becks, it is this division that is threatening to tear the family apart.
Series: The Starcorp Adventures [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2109951
Kudos: 1





	1. The New Order

The year was 2118 when World War III began and ended. In a depressed future, the whole of Earth became engulfed in a conflict to determine who would prevail at the expense of others. The war was the result of many factors, overpopulation, scarcity of natural resources, cultural strife, religious strife, ethnic strife and a global economic crisis. It soon became obvious to all that the militarily dominant nation would endure the hard times to come far better than the others. Acquiring this advantage and preventing others from doing so became equally compelling motivations for armed conflict.

There were no borders or natural boundaries to restrict the arena of this conflict. High-tech, fast moving, airmobile, armies raced around the globe in a titanic struggle to destroy each other. The ultimate-goal was world domination. To this effort, the industrialized nations expended the whole of their cutting-edge machinery of war in little more than ten weeks. They targeted and destroyed each other’s weapons systems, bases, and armies with a vengeance. The fear of retaliatory strikes enabled the major cities of the world to escape much of the effects of these engagements, and the cities had no military significance. Military forces had no reason to hazard the extensive cutting-edge air and space defense systems of the enemy. 

Using non-nuclear weapons, the complete destruction of a heavily armed city could only be done through a concentrated barrage from space. To do this, the low orbit directed energy defenses of the cities would have to be destroyed first. For the whole of the war there was no will to carry out such an attack. This was mostly predicated on the sudden and sustained disruption in global communications and transportation. The loss of these capabilities made it virtually impossible for the industrialized sectors of the world to produce replacement weapons systems during the conflict. The war’s onslaught of destruction upon all quarters of the globe brought industry to a standstill. The weapons in hand comprised the entirety of the utensils of war that all nations possessed. The civilian sectors of the world were reduced to spectators underfoot of a contest between combatting war machines. 

The large population centers of Earth also benefited from the fact that a significant portion of the fighting took place in the distant space around the planet. The space around Earth had become a battlefield. From there all land-based forces and systems could be targeted and destroyed with little fear of retaliation from anything coming from below. To be a combatant, you had to have a space force. Victory was dependent upon controlling the heavens. Subsequently, the outer orbit of Earth became a cauldron of war. Daily, the skies twinkled from hundreds of nuclear explosions as armadas of spacefighters battled for control of this ultimate high ground. Despite these engagements, very little radiation from these space-born battles filtered into Earth's atmosphere. The bulk of it skirted around the planet along its radiation belt. 

The warring nations, of their own accord, abstained from using nuclear weapons within Earth’s atmosphere. Two factors induced this: the poisonous effect of the radiation, which was a threat to all sides, and rail-guns. Space-planes fixed with electromagnetic launchers were capable of propelling high-density metal projectiles deep into the atmosphere at astronomical speeds. The resulting airburst explosions created by these projectiles produced a high degree of devastation without the radioactive fallout. This effect negated the need for the use of nuclear weapons within the atmosphere. It also freed the warring powers to act with unchecked aggression. Nearly a billion-people died during Earth’s global war. Starvation, disease and a near collapse of the medical industry took another two billion plus lives in the year that followed. 

In the immediate aftermath of the full-scale fighting, much of Earth was a scarred and desolate landscape. The open space between the populated centers endured the brunt of the war’s devastating effects. Large, fast-moving, mechanized, armies maneuvered about and engaged one another in these thinly inhabited areas. Bridges, highways, railroads, communication and power lines were destroyed in their wakes. Space-based weapons actively targeted these connections as well. It was not uncommon for the destruction caused by one of these airburst explosions to level an area twenty miles in diameter, and better than a thousand of them were detonated over the course of the war. More than five-thousand small municipalities, adjacent to the blast zones, were incinerated in the aftermath of these detonations. This bombardment of Earth from space lofted massive amounts of dust and debris into the stratosphere. Around the globe, thousands of firestorms emitted even more smoke and soot into the upper atmosphere. The effect of this plunged the temperature of the Earth downward. A man-made winter engulfed the planet for nearly three years. The farms that remained in service in the aftermath of this event were quickly overrun by displaced and starving survivors of the war. Farming out of doors became a near obsolete practice. Survival for the bulk of the remaining nine billion human inhabitants became a daily chore, and the extended countryside about the cities did little to aid them in this effort.  
By this time in Earth’s history, every major city about the globe maintained a fusion power plant. Up until the start of the war nearly all smaller communities were tethered to one of these power plants. The war’s destruction of these connecting power lines turned the large cities into energy oases. The bulk of earth’s human inhabitants soon recognized the large population centers as locations best equipped to endure the strain that the war had put on daily life. Shortly after the start of the war, the mass migration of peoples into the world’s large cities began. Out of the necessity to meet the demand of this burgeoning growth, skyscrapers were almost universally retrofitted into vertical farms. But this had a minimal effect at abating the crippling hunger that the world populace had begun to experience. 

At the end of three months out from the beginning of the war, the earth’s warring parties were reduced to simply defending their borders with handheld weapons and manpower. Warships, air bases, and their supporting components were all destroyed or rendered inoperative. The loss of the capability to project power made the prewar ambitions of the combatting nations irrelevant. In the end, there was no clear victor. The warring nations had simply exhausted their means to prosecute a war on an international scale. 

Six months out from the end of the war, the industrialized countries of the world began to break apart from civil strife. On top of their need for natural resources, the social, political, religious, and ethnic discontents within these countries were the aggregates that fueled divisions within countries. This situation was exasperated a hundred-fold by the absence of a global economy in this post-World War III world. Over the next three years, one-hundred and forty-seven ruling governments around the world fractured into more than five-hundred independent states. Trade was virtually nonexistent. This near collapse of civilization was stopped by an asset that all the divided states of earth maintained separate connections to, the corporations in space. 

Space-based corporate holdings went virtually untouched during the global war that waged on and about the earth. At the start of the war, sixteen separate corporations were actively exploring and mining planets, moons and asteroids as far away from Earth as Jupiter. The process of mining the asteroid belt was by far the largest space venture in the works. Currently, there were 1,739 humans living and working in off-world habitats. 

When the global economy collapsed, the stock markets of the world became obsolete. Out of desperation to escape the famine and desolation on Earth, holders of large quantities of stock certificates began demanding residency within one of these space-based properties. The off-world exodus of the affluent had begun. This sudden growth of unproductive inhabitants in space fueled a massive need for highly skilled people for the maintenance of these habitats and their occupants. To fill this need, the asset value of individuals was given preeminence in all immigration applications that were not marked for special handling. Simply put, what a person had to offer was more valuable than any worthless monetary note issued by a defunct financial institution. Fifty highly skilled individuals were recruited for every rich earthling that went up to these corporations in space. The needs of space-based societies drove their growth, and their growth expanded their needs. 

Necessity was the mechanism that drove the development of inventive new ways for expansion in space. A theoretical idea that was being incrementally tested before the war was hastily pushed forward in this post-war period. A need for rapid growth made this necessary. The ability to construct supermassive structures came to fruition nearly one-hundred years ahead of its predicted timetable. The zero gravity of space was exploited to mold massive globs of molten material into humungous containers. When they cooled, they were cut, transported to a location for assembly and constructed into spacefaring habitats that were capable of housing thousands of people. They were named starships. The ability to produce these habitats in ever greater quantities expanded as each new starship filled up. With each passing year, an ever-expanding populace began to spread out into Sol System space in starships. 

A short time into this growth, space-based enterprises began to perceive themselves as independent entities. The absence of an overriding, earthbound, governing authority along with the loss of the stock markets and banks that they regulated added fuel to this independence. Shortly, these de facto corporate states began dividing in reaction to a tendency of overpopulating around a single resource. Diverging interests and a wealth of minerals throughout the solar system played a role in these divisions as well. Within the three years that followed the war the number of people in space multiplied to 30,000, with another 500,000 plus in line to follow. Space had become the new land of plenty. 

In the aftermath of World War III, the nations of Earth were in no condition to govern, police, or tax space-based enterprises. And as time went on, the earth transitioned from the parent to the dependent. The medical and famine crisis that spanned Earth’s globe was beyond the resources of the governments of Earth to adequately address. By the end of the first three years, counting from the close of the war, the aid from space was just beginning to be felt around the globe. By the end of ten years, this aid was a lifeline that all the inhabitants of Earth were dependent upon. At this time, space-based societies were housing, feeding, and clothing a population greater than a quarter of a million. This growth was partially driven by an insatiable demand from Earth for more aid. Space-based factories were producing half of all machinery that the earthbound governments were using to repair, rebuild, and expand the infrastructures of their states. Mars was being transformed into a farming planet at a rapid pace. Robotically managed greenhouses had been laid out across one-fiftieth of its surface. All other viable areas of the planet were being developed to serve the same purpose. In the ten years out from the Third World War, space-based corporations transitioned into the dominant power in the Solar System. 

Over the next forty years, this transition of power and authority continued to grow for the corporate nation states in space. The Spacers, as they were called, used this clout to influence the governments of Earth away from war and towards constructive pursuits. On infrequent occasions, this clout came in the form of surgical strikes from space. The space-based corporations were slow to initiate force to deter the formation of authoritarian regimes on Earth, but they were not indisposed to its use. From their position above the planet, they infrequently targeted and assassinated leaders that were militantly anti-republic. Within fifty years out from World War III, this level of influence was no longer needed. The threat of withholding food, medicine, and manufactured goods was all that was needed to influence the internal mechanics of earthbound governments. 

This tampering with the operations of states on Earth was seldom appreciated by their governing officials, but it was always respected. Over the first fifty years out from the World War III, the governing bodies of Earth grew increasingly wary of losing the favor of space-based corporations. This distress was the result of their failure to reconstitute much of their past industrial might. Distrust and animosity between the independent states of Earth were the primary cause for this failing. Their hostility towards each other, and their unending territorial squabbles, kept commerce between them in disarray. The return of a global economy was a dream for the future. Aid from space was the lifeline that none of the earthbound states could afford to lose. 

During this same period, much of the human population on Earth grew to hate their space-based overlords. One factor, far more so than any other, was responsible for this: population control. The corporations in space tied the quantity of aid they provided to the strength of a state's population control program. To support these programs, the corporations in space produced the chemical contraceptive that was being widely used on Earth to block pregnancies. In many places, this was being dispensed over the objections and often without the knowledge of the populace. This mass medicating was being dispensed primarily in severely depressed areas. For reasons of politics, the heads of these earthbound governments attributed these tactics to pressure from the Spacers. To a degree this was true but not to the extent that they were being accused. More so than anyone else, the governing authorities within the megacities appreciated the need to shrink the population as quickly as possible. Secretly, they welcomed the medication from space that stemmed the growth of their populace. Publicly they condemned it. To lessen riots and radical acts directed at the local governments, the space-based corporations endured this misrepresentation of the facts. 

By the end of the first fifty years out from the war, the original sixteen space based corporations had grown and divided into fifty-seven. Their combined populations totaled 3.2 million inhabitants. The vast-majority of their numbers were recruited from Earth. These space-based corporations established the Bank of Sol forty years earlier to facilitate commerce between themselves and for the aid they provided to the nation-states of Earth. Because of their new distinction as self-governing spacefaring enterprises, and to differentiate themselves from earthbound businesses, they changed their designation from corporation to star-corporation. They also dispensed with names that identified them as property of Earth. In its stead, they attached unique alpha-numeric identifiers to themselves. The first one to five letters became known as their identifying ticker symbol. The numbers immediately behind that identified the star-system of its incorporation. Zero-one was the identifier for the Sol System. The alphabet characters behind this represented the calendar associated with the incorporation date. The date of the star-corporation’s assimilation was affixed behind that in the order of year, month and day. 

The star-corporations, or starcorp as they soon dubbed themselves, concluded that a true free market society cannot be a sovereign state. To be a true free market society the state itself had to be subject to market forces. It was successfully argued that sovereign states would always have members within a ruling class working to keep the internal dynamics configured to their advantage. Within a democracy, this would be done by misleading the masses into voting against their own best interest. It was thought that the unscrupulously greedy would likely see this as little more than an expense on a ledger measured against profits in another column. Subsequently, working classes demanding more from the state would always be met with some degree of resistance from members of a ruling class that was motivated to give less. Blatantly spoken, a slave labor force is better than a paid labor force from the perspective of the ruling class, and for workers who live in a mart rather than a bazaar it is possible for there to be little difference between the two. 

Within democracies this dichotomy played out with a ruling class opposing incremental changes that moved away from the market and a working class fighting for non-market force solutions to their health, education and welfare needs. This kind of social and political strife was the very thing that the starcorps did not want within their space-born habitats. The starcorps resolved this problem by creating a system that they hoped would oblige both sides of this divide to be equally vested in the health and happiness of the other, inherent stock shares for all. Because starcorps were regarded as business entities that could be merged, bought, sold and were subject to dissolutions, hostile takeovers and selloffs during bankruptcies, they had no inherent right to exist. Choices and preferences, in place of supply and demand, was harnessed to facilitate social, political, constitutional and fiscal evolution within the starcorps. This dynamic was employed to force the ruling and working classes to pander to each other's wants and needs. As shareholders, the financial health of the starcorp was integral to the wellbeing of the masses, and because workers were free to sell their shares and move into the starcorp of their choice, the health and happiness of the masses was a priority of the rich and powerful. For starcorps building a better state than then their competitor was the free market that they existed within. 

For the most part, starcorps were owned by the workers. On average, seventy percent of starcorps' public market profits was divided evenly among its populace. The remainder was portioned into the dividends for all starcorp shareholders. In theory, the percentage deal to the workers could be any ratio, but starcorps had to make the percentage attractive enough to lure workers to it. Inhabitant shareholders were allocated their dividends and pay with living expenses and starcorp taxes removed. Non-inhabitant shareholders were allocated their dividends with just the taxes removed. 

Along with the goods that starcorps produced for the external market, its members had a license to invest their shares into internal market enterprises. These were business ventures that serviced the people who lived in, visited or passed through a starcorp. These were invariably in the service and entertainment industries, and the businesses that supported and supplied them. 

Shareholders also had the option of leveraging into existence a subsidiary external market enterprise. These business ventures required investors to assume a significant portion of the financial risk in exchange for a matching percentage of the profits. Because of the extent of their investment and risk, these shareholders were often given a controlling hand over the venture. These ventures were contractual and invariably had a time limit. When the contract expired starcorps had the option of extending it, buying out the investors and absorbing the entirety of the enterprise, or selling its shares.

Starcorps’ Board of Directors numbered between fifteen to twenty-five individuals on average. They earned their seats on the board through the accumulation of proxies. The strength of a Director was determined by the combined weight of shares he or she commanded. The Directors wrote starcorp laws. In all votes, the side with the greatest weight of shares behind it won. Directors also had the task of planning the overall objective of the starcorp and hiring the operational heads to make it happen. Starcorps' Judiciary and Chief Law Enforcement Agency were elected to office by a simple majority vote of the Board of Directors. Their authorities were governed by a constitution that was implemented and amended by a majority vote of the populace. 

The greatest political clout within starcorps belonged to the populace. They had the power to sell their shares and leave. Starcorps were dependent upon their inhabitants to generate its profits. Possessing workers that were more skilled, talented, and productive than their competitors was the goal of every starcorp. In pursuit of this end, starcorps felt obliged to make life within their domain as attractive as possible for its inhabitants. The alternative to this was to not only lose the workers they had but fail to attract more to replace them if, and when necessary. 

In the latter half of the twenty-second century, starcorps become boomtowns on a course towards boundless growth. They are the paragons of wealth and power of this time and havens of peace and prosperity. During this same period, planet Earth is a deforested living world, crammed with human life, impoverished by want, disease and strife, and paved over with several dozen high-tech super metropolises that are struggling to survive. 2177 is the year that the pendulum of power begins to swing the other way.


	2. Going Up

“Sawyer… you okay?”

Daniel Beck had been paying little attention to his eldest son. His wife, Wendy, was dominating most of his concern. Her fingernails had been digging into his arm, off and on, for the past hour. He measured her distress by the intensity of her grip. Every new squeak, murmur or beep she heard generated a sudden increase in pressure to which he would frequently give his reassurance that everything was going to be okay.

“Yeah,” Sawyer promptly responded to his father’s query along with a nervous nod of his head.

Both of Sawyer’s hands were tightly gripped to the armrests of his seat. Daniel noted his son’s unease from the beginning, but he expected this to fade once they were under way. By this time, the other members of the Beck family were experiencing no discomfort. Daphne was fascinated by the event and Adam’s enthusiasm for it was contained only by the seat belts that kept him from bounding about the compartment. Daniel was indifferent to it all for the most part. His worry for his family overrode his own minor trepidation with traveling in a spaceplane for the very first time.

The Beck family was on an adventure that they anticipated to encompass the remainder of their lives. Return trips to Earth were normally for rare visits. The expense of taking them up and away from the planet was considerable. Nearby Spacers, occupants of orbiting and lunar habitats, were the few exceptions. Their visits were more frequent. But the final-destination for the Becks was the Starship Amundsen, which was situated in solar orbit adjacent to a planetoid in the asteroid belt. This was to be their new home for the foreseeable future. However, to get there, they would first have to transfer onto the spaceship Gallivant.

The craft that was ferrying them up to their interplanetary transport ship was an eighty yards long, delta winged spaceplane. Its fuselage was widest at the back and it tapered to a point at the front. Twin repulsor engines at the back generated its thrust. The spaceplane had escaped the pull of Earth three minutes earlier. Despite this, its engines continued to power it on to ever greater speeds. At this point, the worst of the flight was behind them. Outside of Earth's atmosphere and gravitational field, the spaceplane was free to make maximum use of its repulsor-engine technology.

Despite the acceleration, the contents and structure of the craft experienced no inertia. This was accomplished by an artificially generated zero gravity environment. This effect was dubbed a Zero G Chamber. Anti-gravity generators had the effect of canceling out inertia within an enclosed system. This was achieved through no small expenditure of energy. The amount of power needed to sustain the effect was decided by the mass of the craft, the weight of gravity and/or inertia pulling at the chamber.

The first Zero-G Chamber was created by accident. The initial purpose of the experiment was the development of a repulsion shield for spaceships. Damage caused by micrometeorite impacts was the incentive for the research. On a regular basis, fast moving objects the size of a marble or smaller went unnoticed until it was too late to evade or destroy them. All spaceships were fixed with particle beam guns for just this purpose. They were very effective at disintegrating small objects. Spaceplanes, because of their size and quickness, were expected to evade these objects. If both these defenses failed, a micrometeorite was capable of doing considerable harm to a spacecraft. Thrusters, windows, and docking bays were particularly vulnerable. These mishaps were rare events. But when they did happen, they had the potential to be fatal to someone or everyone aboard a spacecraft.

The repulsion shield was developed to protect the entire spacecraft. The technology produced a welcomed added benefit. The discovery that the repulsion shield was capable of dampening inertial forces within the ship spawned a whole new interest in the technology. The first antigravity environment was achieved not long after this discovery. This technology opened the solar system to humankind. It revolutionized air and space travel. New, more powerful, repulsor-engines did not have to be regulated to stay within the structural limits of the ship and the physical limits of its crew. It only needed to stay within the limits that the Zero-G Chamber could absorb. The anti-gravity generator countered stresses to ship and crew.

Daniel Beck expected his children to acclimate to the weightless environment of space in short order. But he had no illusion that Wendy would be so quick to adapt. Her discomfort with excessive speeds and heights were well known to the family. At this time, they were all grateful that nausea was not a condition that accompanied her discomfort.

“Is it going to be like this on the Gallivant?” Wendy implored with heavy breaths.

“No,” Daniel assured in a pleasing tone. “The Gallivant has a habitat ring.”

Wendy already knew this, but her ill at ease with the sensation of falling unnerved her to the point that she needed this understanding reinforced. It was common knowledge that starships were simply large habitat rings with a spacecraft attached or built into them. What was less commonly known was that spaceships like the Gallivant were primarily interplanetary crafts with a small habitat ring attached. The early spaceships of the late twenty-first century were regularly constructed without these habitat rings. The whole ship simply rotated. Since the development of Zero-G Chamber technology, every interplanetary spaceship was designed and built with one inside. The Gallivant was just eight years-old. This made it relatively new by comparison to most, and its habitat ring can accommodate 250 occupants.

“How long before we get there, Dad?” Adam questioned excitedly.

Adam had been eagerly awaiting this trip off world ever since he learned they were going. After the completion of each segment of the journey, his enthusiasm focused in on the next leg of their journey-much to the annoyance of his sister.

“It’s right there on the monitor,” Daphne instructed with attitude. “Stop asking dumb questions.”

Each of the fifty acceleration chairs within the passenger compartment of the spaceplane had a flat screen computer monitor built into them. These monitors swiveled up out of the side of the chair on an arm. Much of the details available to the flight crew was accessible from these monitors. Daphne had been studying this information near to the exclusion of all else, tapping and re-tapping the screen for more and new information. Sawyer frequently accessed it as well, despite his unease with the flight. Daniel gave it rare nudges for new information. Wendy and Adam ignored it altogether. She was in too much distress and he was too thrilled by the sensations of the flight.

At ten years of age, Adam was the youngest of the three Beck children. His older brother, Sawyer, was twelve and his sister, Daphne, was fifteen. The Becks were five of the thirty-eight passengers that were making the transition up into space on this flight. Their home for the whole of their lives, up until then, was in the Great Lakes Alliance, a sector of the North American continent that encompassed, among others, the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Cincinnati and St. Louis. They specifically resided in the megacity of Chicago, a metropolis that took up the land area around the whole southern end of Lake Michigan, engulfing Gary, Indiana in the process.

During this time of human existence on Earth, it was uncommon for couples to have more than one child. This was due entirely to the fact that most the planet’s human inhabitants survived off government assistance. Because of the extreme overpopulation within the megacities, government assistance could afford to do little more than maintain a string of state operated soup kitchens. Slums made up sixty percent of the urban landscape. To squelch the pangs of hunger among the masses and ease the financial burden upon the state, governments around the world instituted their own variation of population control. All of them were designed to affect a rapid reduction of the populace. Within the Great Lakes Alliance, this was being done by what was termed reproductive rights rationing. In effect, what it did was allocate a limited number of progenies that each individual could produce. To enforce its control over population growth, the governments made varied methods of birth control widely available. This included lacing the food within the soup kitchens with birth control medication. Harsh penalties were also imposed on individuals that carried a pregnancy to term without a permit from the state.

During this time within the Great Lakes Alliance, all individuals were given one-half of a single right to produce an offspring. And this right could only be exercised with a permit from the state. Limited quantities of these permits are doled out yearly. It was done in this way to control the number of newborns per year.

To ease the burden on the state’s welfare program, reproductive permits were only given to those that could afford the expense of raising a child. Individuals and couples that could afford to purchase the reproductive rights that others were willing to sell could conceivably be given multiple permits across their lifetimes. These exchanges were encouraged by the state. This selling of reproductive rights did not endear the affluent to the impoverished. For most of the population, the affluent were considered one step above a Spacer. This perspective was driven heavily by the fact that nearly all the people that immigrated to a starcorp came out of the middle-class or affluent communities.

Daniel and Wendy Beck were just such a couple to benefit from this restriction on reproduction. It was not uncommon for affluent couples to have two, three, four and even five children. This was due primarily to the fact that thousands of destitute and desperate individuals hungrily sold their reproductive rights every year. It was a buyer’s market. On post-World War III Earth, children were symbols of affluence. However, not even children could compensate for the vexation that most these parents had with the prospect of living out their lives in the ruins of planet Earth.

Daniel Beck had a pending application to go up to a starcorp since before his marriage to Wendy-seventeen years earlier. He hoped that his aptitude in the field of computer systems would get him selected. This proclivity had served him well in the past. He had learned at a very early age that being of value was the key to living above the poverty line. This was a precept that was preached to him by his mother. In conformance with her teaching, he applied his genius level intellect to the task of acquiring a degree in Data Communications System Technology.

There were no graduate schools on post-World War III Earth. The large universities collapsed beneath the broken, global economy. Trade and technical schools filled in the void left behind by their demise. Individuals skilled in the necessities for maintaining the cities and the industries within them were in high demand. Anyone that tested high for an aptitude that was of value could have their training subsidized by an industry or the state, provided he or she rendered services to the same after graduation. Daniel attended a technical school between the ages of seventeen through twenty on a subsidy from the state. He began working for the megacity of Chicago the day after his graduation.

Starcorps were equally interested in these tech school graduates and attached access to them as a provision for the aid they provided to the earthbound states. Several thousand graduates from these technical schools were recruited by a starcorp annually. Signup sheets for starcorp membership could be found in nearly every trade or technical school on the planet. Where the nation states of earth needed skilled people to repair and maintain their civilizations, the starcorps needed them to grow theirs.

Starcorps judge propagating in space to be a risky business. Despite this perception, babies are born here. But this occurs infrequently, and only when permission to do so is given by the Human Resources Division of the starcorp. The reason permission had to be given was because Spacers, in general, lived for a very long time. The medical industry in space, coupled with the science of genetic engineering, made it possible to undo much of the naturally occurring effects of aging. Seven percent of the population living in starcorps was greater than 100 years of age, and all of them showed no visible evidence of being older than forty. Given their longevity and the limited room in space, indiscriminate propagation was not permitted.

Despite this prohibition against unchecked reproduction, children had their benefits in space. Starcorp communities were all top-heavy with high IQ residents. There was an ever-present demand for people to fill blue collar positions, and there was a continuous deficiency of people that performed these tasks well. Individuals born and raised in space, with an aptitude for hands-on work, filled most these jobs. Earth recruits regularly filled many of the remaining vacant positions.

Even with managed reproduction, starcorps learned early on that there would always be a significant percentage of newborns that grew up to be liabilities that had to be fed, clothed, housed, policed and oxygenated. The starcorps concluded that this was an expense that they could not allow to grow. Despite this concern, there was no measure or test that could tell them who or what a newborn would be as an adult. Subsequently, Spacers that were convicted of an offense punishable by incarceration were routinely ferried down to Earth for their confinement and retirement. There was simply no room in space for a growing population of people that served no purpose. It was for this reason that cherry-picking new members, adults and their children, from Earth became the preferred method for expanding their numbers.

The Becks were not the only family going up to a starcorp. Recruiting a whole family was a regular practice. So long as all the members tested and interviewed well starcorps had no problem factoring them into their numbers. A small family took up little more space than a single individual, and if the whole of that family had skills and aptitudes that were deemed useful, then the starcorp counted itself the better for the addition. The IQ, aptitude and disposition of Daphne, Sawyer and Adam did the Becks no harm. They showed a predilection for academics and stable demeanors. But it was Wendy who pushed their application over the top. Her talent in the field of botany was clearly at a high level of genius. Daniel’s value doubled the moment he married her, and their stock had been on the rise ever since. In the year 2182, Starcorp DCT01UTC21480610 issued an immigration invitation to Daniel and his family ahead of nine other applicants.

Becoming a Spacer was a lifelong dream of Daniel’s and the hope of his mother. Daniel watched her die impoverished in her bed when he was at the age of fourteen. The hospitals had neither the room nor the time to give to someone that could not pay the bill. Visiting nurses and neighbors did what they could, but this was not even close to the attention she needed. The loss of her in this manner made Daniel more determined to make a better life for himself and his family. He grew up in his uncle's care after his mother’s death, then set off on his own at the age of twenty-one. At the age of twenty-two, he met and married Wendy. She was twenty at that time. Their paths crossed inside a vertical farm. She was maintaining the crops and he was maintaining the computers. His love for her and the children made him even more determined to migrate to a starcorp.

Wendy’s priority was to make the best of her life there on Earth. She saw her marriage to Daniel as the means to this end and, by comparison to most, they were living a very good life. Nonetheless, to please her husband, Wendy cosigned Daniel’s standing application for immigration into a starcorp. She did this while praying that it would never come to pass, and she had more than a little confidence that this would be the case. In her mind, there were far too many other people more qualified than they; and because of this, she gave it little thought up until the moment the application was approved. After that, she could think of little else.

“What’s happening?” Wendy questioned with a look of shock towards her husband’s monitor.

The information on the display indicated that something new had just transpired.

“We’re decelerating, honey, that’s all,” Daniel reassured her with a pat on the arm that was attached to the hand that was gripped to his own.

Wendy relaxed a little, but it was only noticeable to Daniel.

“Are we there?” Adam suddenly questioned with an intonation of surprise.

“No,” Daphne stressed with a lecturing tone. “We’re just halfway there.”

Dejected by the knowledge that he could not yet float free from his seat, Adam relaxed beneath the restraints of his chair. His wait was only an hour long, but anxious anticipation made this time feel like an eternity for him. The other thirty-seven passengers aboard the Gallivant endured the wait only slightly better than he. Their impatience was due, primarily, to the absence of windows in the passenger compartment. The spaceplane gave most of them a feeling of being confined. The only means they had for knowing what was happening outside of the ship was through the computer monitors attached to their seats. The pilots advised them that the lack of windows was no great loss and that there would be nothing nearby to see until they reached the Gallivant. And even with that, their monitors would give them a far better perspective than any port window.

The only windows built into the spaceplane were in the cockpit and those were seldom used for anything related to the operation of the craft. The cameras about the spaceplane gave them 360-degree visibility on their monitors; and even this was insufficient for the purposes of navigation. Above all else to navigate their surroundings, the information generated by the sensor field was the window that the pilots depended upon.

“There it is,” Daphne announced with excitement.

A speck on the video monitors in front of the other passengers had been enlarged on Daphne's to near the width of the screen. It was the spaceship Gallivant. In appearance, it looked like a toy floating motionless in space. At the front of the craft was an enclosed disk that housed the habitat ring. It was 60 yards high and 200 yards in diameter. Connected to it was a rectangular fuselage, 150 yards wide and 60 yards high. At the back end of the fuselage was the engineering section. The primary thrusters were attached behind that. In all the Gallivant was 800 yards long.

All thirty-eight passengers aboard the spaceplane spent the next twenty minutes watching, via their monitors, as their spaceplane approached and then maneuvered its way through an opening in the side of the Gallivant's fuselage. Inside was a large, well lit, docking bay and cargo hold. This space was 300 yards long, 140 yards wide and 40 yards high. Two other space-planes, of equivalent dimensions, were already parked inside at the front and mid-section of the bay. There was only enough room for three spaceplanes of this size. Each spaceplane in the bay had its own access door to the Gallivant. Two on one side of the ship at either end of the bay. The third set of doors was on the opposite side in the center. The Beck’s spaceplane gently settled alongside the second parked spaceplane. One minute after it attached to a docking arm, the large twin doors to the bay began to slide shut. This took all of two minutes to complete. At the end of this time, the captain made an announcement over the speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Gallivant.”

Thirty seconds after this announcement the door to the aircrew cabin opened and the flight attendant floated out of it. He closed the hatch behind him and launched himself down a short passageway bordered by four lavatories, two on either side. At the end of the passageway, he entered the passengers seating area. He was a moderately tall, decidedly slender and a relatively handsome man that looked to be about thirty years of age. As he floated past the thirty-eight passengers and towards the back end of the compartment, he instructed them all to unbuckle themselves from their chairs and to follow him.

Spaceplanes were built around the idea that floating inside of them would be the primary means of individual movement. In the crew and passenger compartments and walkways, the walls and ceilings were padded and the floors were carpeted. Evenly spaced padded hand rungs were built into the walls and ceilings to assist in locomotion and control. The floor-to-ceiling height of the crew and passenger compartments was seven-feet. The acceleration chairs were embedded into the floor.

The thirty-eight passengers floated up out of their chairs in seemingly slow motion. All of them were wearing one-piece brown, flight suits. Many of them had small, identical carry-on bags slung across their torsos. Wendy held on to Daniel’s flight suit and let him do the work of locomotion and navigation. Out of habit, the children followed behind them. This took extreme constraint from Adam. He had all he could do to control his desire to fly free.

At the rear of the compartment, the flight attendant touched his luminescent bracelet to the display by the exit hatch. A second later the hatch swung open automatically. The flight attendant hesitated in front of the opening just long enough to note that the passengers were ready to follow. He then floated out of the hatchway. All thirty-eight passengers followed behind him in a single file. A walkway and staircase were located on the other side of the hatch. The walkway spanned the width of the spaceplane. At one end of it was the hatch that opened in and gave access to the cargo hold in the aft-section of the spaceplane. The staircase descended two levels to the bottom of the craft. The flight attendant floated down the staircase to the spaceplane's lowest level. There were two hatches at this level, one that opened in and gave access to the aft-cargo hold, and a second that opened in and gave access to an airlock along the side wall of the spaceplane. A door on the other side of the airlock opened in and gave access to the exterior of the spaceplane. The flight attendant waited in front of the first airlock door for nearly a minute. His thirty-eight passengers congregated behind him. Moments later, a report on the monitor beside the hatch confirmed that a shuttle craft had attached itself to the far side of the airlock and had opened its hatch. The flight attendant manually opened both doors of the airlock after receiving this report and ushered the passengers through the hatch. All thirty-eight of his passengers followed his lead. When all were through, the flight attendant secured the hatches as he followed the thirty-eight into the shuttle. 

The shuttlecraft looked to be little more than a box with windows and airtight doors at either end. There were no seats. And there was no one inside driving it. The spaceplane's thirty-eight passengers filled up the shuttle. They used hand rungs to secure themselves while the shuttle disconnected from the spaceplane and floated towards the front end of the Gallivant. Out of the windows, the passengers could see two more shuttles docking to the spaceplane: one for the spaceplane's crew and a second for the luggage of its thirty-eight passengers.

At the front end of the docking bay, the shuttle attached itself to an airlock door for the Gallivant. The portal was situated high up upon the wall. The shuttle hatch opened automatically a second after it locked into place. The flight attendant opened the two airlock hatches on the outer side of the shuttle. What looked like a tunnel to the passengers, appeared on the other side of the airlock. Evenly spaced lights embedded in the walls illuminated a padded circular passageway which was five yards in circumference. Clusters of four padded hand rungs were built into the walls at evenly spaced intervals. The rungs were arranged in a cross formation. The length of the passage was twenty yards. The flight attendant used a hand-rung to secure himself by the open hatch. He then gave his final instruction.

“You will find someone at the end of this passage to help you get settled aboard ship. Welcome to DCT01.”

The thirty-eight passengers acknowledged his greeting with nods and/or smiles before floating through the airlock and down the passageway, one after the other. The Becks were in the middle of this procession. They came out at the other end into a long chamber that was clearly curved along the perimeter of the habitat ring; the chamber itself was stationary. There was no artificial gravity. The chamber was oval, ten feet high, fifteen feet wide and thirty yards long. Situated in the inside wall of the curve and across from their point of entry were the entrances to six transport pods. The entryways were rectangular and spaced ten feet apart. Next to each transport door was a Ship’s Steward. They anchored themselves to the wall by hooking their feet under hand rungs in the wall that were situated near the lower end of the door closest to them.

The thirty-eight passengers of the spaceplane floated into the chamber cautiously. They all looked to be unsure of how to handle themselves in the zero-gravity environment. Many fumbled and tumbled about in desperate attempts to secure themselves. Daniel quickly grasped the concept of propelling himself towards his destination. With Wendy grasped tightly about his torso, Daniel propelled himself towards an available cluster of hand rungs, catching one deftly. Wendy held on to him tightly through it all. Most of the children floated about the chamber in playful discovery. Sawyer maneuvered himself from one rung cluster to the next with only a minor look of unease. The inertia generated by throwing himself towards the next rung gave him some relief from the hollow sensation in his stomach. When this activity finally settled down most of the passengers were secured to a rung in the same up/down orientation as the stewards. Three children were upside down; and Adam was one of them.

“Welcome aboard the Gallivant and to Starcorp DCT01. My name is Karen. I’m the senior steward aboard ship.”

The other stewards in the chamber were comprised of four women and two men. Karen was situated next to the transport door that was third from the right. Each of the stewards had small waist packs strapped to them. Their waist packs appeared to be bulging with something inside of them.

“To my left is Jerry,” Karen continued to speak without pause. “And to his left is Dalia. To my right is Kumiko, and to her right is Leo. And at the very end, down there, is Jana,” she finished with a point.

The group of passengers, plus the three excited children situated upside down, listened mostly in silence to Karen’s words, with only a few giggles coming from above.

Karen paused just long enough to pan a smile to all before continuing.

“We’re going to be calling you up, one at a time, or in a family group. We will then assign and activate your com-link wands.”

As she reported this, Karen held up what looked to be a fourteen-inch-long rod. She bent it to show how flexible it was, and she displayed the one that was wound about her wrist and worn as a bracelet. The other stewards followed her lead and displayed their com-link bracelets. Karen gave about two seconds to this demonstration and then continued her address.

“After that, you will get into the transport pod and go to your assigned cabins. The ship’s computer will guide you once you’re logged into the system.”

Karen hesitated and gave them all a look to see if they had a question. Once she was convinced that they understood what was happening, she continued.

“It is important that you keep your wands on you any time you’re out of your cabin. If the ship’s computer detects you moving about without a com-link, it will generate an alert. And trust me, you won’t be able to move fifty yards outside of your cabin without being detected by a sensor. This will hold true inside the Starships as well as here on the Gallivant. So, get use to wearing them, because you can and will be fined if you make it a habit of moving around without it.”

Once again Karen paused to see if everyone understood before continuing.

“When the transport pod comes to a stop you will be inside the habitat ring, so be careful. It may take you a few minutes to acclimate yourselves to gravity again. When you get to your cabin, the ship’s computer will begin the process of orientation. You need to go through the orientation from beginning to end. You can do this individually or as a family group, it doesn’t matter-but you must finish it. The system will not process you into the healthcare, financial, employment and education database until you have done this. Are there any questions?”

Karen paused once again to see if everyone understood. After about five seconds of silence, the process began. Each of the stewards produced a small computer tablet from out of their waist packs. The device looked to be nothing more than a small, rectangular, pane of glass that was tethered to their waist packs. The tablet activated when they touched it to their com-link bracelets.

The bracelets were pencil thick, round strips of flexible plastic. A slight glow of white light emanated from them. They were long enough to be wound no less than twice around the wrist of any wearer. They were flexible enough to be worn as a choker, a head ornament, or even an ankle bracelet. When in a linear configuration, they resembled wands. How they were adorned was subject to the choice of the wearer.

The com-links were also capable of glowing or blinking radiant colors. This was a decorative affectation that was subject to the preference of the wearer. The com-links had multiple capabilities: they were personal computers, cellphones and modems that maintained connections with external computers and monitors. In addition, with a tap of a finger, the luminous plastic displayed the time.

When the tablets became active, the stewards began calling out the names that appeared on the screens. One-by-one, the stewards assigned com-links to all the newcomers, logged them into the system, and dispatched them into the transport pods. The entire procedure was quick and simple, and the stewards performed it with practiced expertise. It took about ten minutes to process the entire group. Beck was the second name called by Kumiko. The entire family was summoned forward for her handling. She verified each of their identities by palm print. After each of the verifications, she produced a com-link wand for each of them. After briefly touching the wand to the tablet, she wound it about the wrist of whichever Beck she was processing at that moment. This process only took about thirty seconds for each family member. Once the Beck family was logged into the system, Kumiko instructed them to climb into the transport pod and to follow the instructions from the computer.

From the inside, the transport pod looked to be a large, padded, hollow ball with seating built into the sides. The interior was eight feet across. There were no video screens, keypads or controls to be seen anywhere inside. Six-inch-wide speakers were situated near the top of the pod in four, evenly spaced, locations. A single, overhead light fixture illuminated the pod’s interior. There were seven seats built into the lining of the pod. Each seat had its own armrest that the Beck family members used to maneuver themselves. A border of lights around each chair lit up the instant the armrest was touched. Once they were floating over the seat, the sensation of a mild suction of air could be felt pulling them down. It took the Becks less than a minute to become sucked into their seats. Once they were all seated the pod door closed and the transport began to move.

The sensation of inertia caught the family's attention. This was something they had not felt since before their liftoff from Earth. It took the pod approximately fifteen seconds to arrive at its destination. At the end of this time, the Becks could feel the sensation of gravity, and the lights bordering their chairs blinked off. A few seconds later, the door to the pod opened and a computer voice from inside the pod spoke:

“You have arrived at your stop. Your assigned cabins are out the door and to your right. Your cabin designations are displayed on your com-links. Please go to your cabins and complete the orientation process. And welcome to DCT01.”

The feeling of standing up against gravity had all the Becks mesmerized for a brief time. After stepping out of the pod, and into a concourse, the family took a short time to examine this new gravity. The concourse they were in was five yards wide and ten feet high. At either end, the concourse trailed out of sight beneath an uphill curve. At first, this visage gave them cause to be unsure of their balance. But the effect was gone after several moments. Wendy and Sawyer were the most grateful members of the family for the sensation of gravity. They felt this way despite their unease with being in an airtight container that was floating in space.

The concourse was nearly empty of people. Two individuals were seen passing by and another was seen walking away. The passersby, a man and a woman, directed a nod and smile their way ahead of proffering a soft, “Hi.” They continued by after this as if they had somewhere to be. Their clothing was casual. They were not wearing the jumpsuit of a passenger or the uniform of a crew-member. Daniel assumed they were passengers that had arrived ahead of them. After returning their smiles and salutation, he encouraged his family to push on to their cabins.

The Beck family had no trouble locating their compartments. Their addresses were displayed on whichever side of the com-link bracelet was facing up. The habitat rings had a simple configuration. There were two levels. Cabins were situated on either side of the second ring down. The ring above it was where the offices, workrooms, infirmary, cafeteria, and recreation areas were located. The Beck family noted that their com-links were indicating that each of them had a separate cabin. They found all of them ten yards down the concourse-situated side-by-side. Each cabin was five yards wide and fifteen yards long. The head of a full-size bed was affixed against the sidewall at the center of the room. A large video monitor was built into the wall opposite the bed. A water closet was in the farthest corner of the cabin. This varied from right to left depending upon the cabin. Inside the water closet was a single person shower, a wash basin and a toilet. Also, affixed within the cabin was a clothes cabinet, a desk and a small table with four chairs. Situated at the front end of each cabin was a door that connected to the adjacent cabin to either side.

After examining each of their cabins and finding them identical, the Becks congregated in Daniel’s cabin and began the interactive orientation process together. The Amundsen’s mainframe computer began guiding them through a series of questionnaires in between brief lectures on DCT01UTC21480610’s history, assets, short term goals and operations. Halfway through they were interrupted by the delivery of their luggage. They quickly navigated the bags to the correct cabins and returned to the orientation. The entire orientation took nearly an hour to complete. At the end of it, the Becks knew all that they needed to know to live and function within Starcorp DCT01.

One of the many things they learned was that their com-links had a myriad of functions. First among these was that they identified them through fingerprint and voice match. This information was communicated to the ship’s mainframe computer through a wireless connection. Also, the com-link was a cell phone, a personal computer, display goggles, a card key and their wallet.

The wand had a built-in capability for transforming into a crescent shape so that it could be used as a telephone. The owner needed only to hold it in hand and speak the voice command, “wand telephone.” Positioning one end by an ear and the other in front of the mouth made private communications possible. The voice command, “wand glasses,” instructed it to reshape into display goggles that fit snuggly over the eyes, about the head and on top of the ears. In appearance, they looked like tanning goggles. The inside of the lens displayed images provided by the processor. The outside of the lens emitted radiant energy that the wearer’s hands could interact with to give instructions to the processor. The ends of the goggles produced sounds provided by the processor.

When the com-link, in any configuration, was touched to a tablet or monitor the information within them became accessible from that device. Once this connection was initiated the com-link wirelessly maintained it until directed to stop, or it was out of range. In addition, the com-link monitored and transmitted the vital signs of the wearer. With the com-link in place, DCT01’s mainframe computers were prepared to comply with any reasonable request. Without the com-link, an individual was regarded as an intruder.

By the end of the orientation, the Becks were aware that they had another seven hours of personal time to consume before the next leg of their journey began. Knowing this had them all conflicted about how to spend this time. They had just climbed out of their beds on Earth five hours earlier. And their travels, so far, had them all awake with excitement and anticipation for what was to come next. Taking a nap was an option they all passed on. Instead, they decided to explore the ship. They began this excursion by changing into their everyday attire. Ten minutes later they were walking the concourse outside of their cabins. It did not take them long to discover that all was basically the same on the bottom ring. After traversing a quarter of the way around it, they decided to take the staircase to top level above.

There were eight staircases located at equal distances apart on the concourse. Each staircase was situated where a cabin normally would have been. Two flights of stairs connected by a midway landing, enabled the staircase to zigzag up to the next level. When the Becks stepped out on the ring above, they found a completely different floor plan. In place of the cabins bordering a single concourse, there was an expanse of space thirty-five yards wide. The ceiling was twenty feet up from the floor. A meandering, ten-foot-wide path trailed up the curve of the ring. Potted vegetation, trees, and flowers were everywhere. A minimum of half-a-dozen people could be seen at any given time as they walked along the path. Benches and lawn furniture were scattered about in this park like environment. The Becks soaked it all in visually as they moved through this indoor park at a casual pace.

“Hi,” a young woman greeted Wendy when they caught each other’s eye.

Wendy returned the greeting with a smile and a “hi.”

The family continued to move on, repeating this social obeisance on three more occasions before coming upon a decidedly different scene. This new path led into a hallway along the extreme left of the ring. To the right of the path was a structure that connected from the floor to the ceiling, twenty feet up. Upper and lower level windows on the side of the structure looked out upon the park they had just traveled through. Etched in the double glass sliding doors on this side was the word infirmary. The Becks noted this and then continued down the corridor that went along the side of this structure.

The corridor they walked down went on for thirty yards. Ten yards down the path was a food court. The Becks went inside and found an area that was ten yards wide and twenty yards deep. A kitchen and receiving line bordered the back end of it. The infirmary had a door that opened out into the food court. On the other side of the food court was a door with the words “Captain’s Quarters” etched on it. The Becks took note of all of this as they lingered there to examine it all.

Seated or moving about in the food court were more than twenty people; most were casually dressed in civilian attire. Daniel noted only two individuals that appeared to be in uniform. The smell of food was coming from the kitchen area. Most of the people there were eating and drinking at the tables. Many were conversing with another person seated across from them.

The Becks were comforted by the sight of so many people that looked to be enjoying themselves as they ate and conversed. It suggested that life would be pleasant and comfortable in space. Wendy was happy to see a variety of ethnicities. The group inside the cafeteria was only a small sampling, but Wendy inferred from it that there was a generous mix of different ethnic identities within starcorps. Her worry about this issue was due to her African-mix lineage. It was Wendy’s practice to avoid places that she feared would not welcome them. Her worry extended to starcorps despite the widely publicized and touted report on its rich mixture of existing ethnicities. Starcorps proudly advertised their constant search to recruit skilled and talented people from all ethnic groups.

In starcorp board rooms everywhere, the common position on what constituted a good fit was any applicant with a mindset that was in harmony with spacer communities. Race and color were not a consideration; prejudices were not to be tolerated. Religious teachings for adults was permitted. Comparative Religious Studies for adolescents was mandated. Limited religious’ accessories were tolerated on adults; none were allowed on adolescents or children. The acceptance of diverging political views was expected. Respect for the majority or dominant vote (whichever was applicable) was demanded. It was comprehensively accepted that authoritarians, militant fanatics, and self-righteous zealots had no place in an airtight container that was adrift in the vacuum of space.

These requirements produced the predominant thinking that the Board of Directors had no right to govern the consensual acts of the populace that did not do direct, or indirect, harm to another. This collective mindset came about through the practice of vetting immigrants in place of the wholesale acceptance of people that met the minimum requirements. The borders of starcorps were virtually impossible to penetrate without the permission and assistance of the government. 

The Becks were accustomed to interacting with a broad mixture of races, as were most people in the twenty-second century. By the start of the global war, all the population centers of Earth were integrated with every known ethnic group by a notable percentage. The aftermath of the war thickened this mixture tenfold. The large cities became catch basins for the survivors of the worldwide holocaust of World War III. Ethnic discord became a minor issue as the collective populations of the cities struggled to fend off disease, famine and the shutdown of municipal services. This was the world the Becks knew. They had only advertisements and rumors to prepare them for the world they were entering.

“Come on, let’s eat,” Wendy encouraged with a smile.

Wendy wasn't hungry, but she did want to get some food into her family since she didn't know when their next opportunity to eat would be. She also wanted to get some nap time in this break period. The family followed her lead and filed into the serving line. There were only two servers behind the food bar and only two other people in line to be served, a young man and a woman who looked to be together. Wendy and family came to a stop behind the couple as the servers gathered up their food.

“Hi,” the tall, attractive, brunette woman in front of Wendy spoke with an excited expression.

Wendy was momentarily surprised by the exuberance in her greeting. With a slight hesitation, she responded back with a “hi” while beaming a broad smile.

“Is this your family?” The brunette questioned enthusiastically.

Wendy confirmed that they were with a nod and a soft “yes.” Before she could say more, the brunette tossed out a quick introduction.

“I’m Angela Lynch and this is my husband, Stuart. We’re both medical students. We both tested very high. So, we’re going up to continue our studies. How about you?”

Wendy was both amused and enthralled by the speed of Angela’s delivery. After giving Angela a brief acknowledging smile, Wendy responded with information about her family. Daniel and Stuart followed their spouses lead and joined in on the meet and greet. Excited about their new adventures, the two couples began a discourse that continued an hour past their lunch. Seated at a separate table, Daphne, Sawyer, and Adam finished their meals in short order and then continued with their exploration of the ship.

When Daniel and Wendy ended their converse with Stuart and Angela, they contacted their kids, via their com-links, and summoned them back to the cabins. The family reunited there and settled in for a short rest. They were all aware of what was to come in just a few hours’ time. And they were all looking forward to it with either dread, excitement, or a mixture of both. Three hours later the video monitors in their cabins were switched on remotely. A broadcast image of the First Officer appeared on their screens. While this was happening an alarm in the concourse began blaring. With three brief repetitive statements, the First Officer directed all aboard to “make preparations for launch.” The Becks commenced doing so as if they had done it a hundred times before.

The civilians aboard the Amundsen had nothing more to do beyond redressing into their flight suits and going to their assigned launch stations. When the Becks arrived outside of the transport pod dock, they found more than a dozen people in line ahead of them. Their wait did not take long. The pods arrived on an average of four times a minute. It seemed as if there was one always waiting. The degree of adeptness of those getting in ahead of them was the greatest holdup. When all the Becks were aboard the transport pod, Daniel instructed the ship’s computer to “execute.” There was no need for him to say more because the computer had one primary function when the Captain gave the command for all aboard to get to their launch stations. It would take an overriding command authority to instruct the pods to go anywhere other than the appropriate launch station for its occupant.

The ship’s computer identified the passengers by their com-links and navigated the transport pod to the port closest to their space capsule. Two seconds past the closing of the transport pod door, the Becks began to feel gravity fall away. In less than 30 seconds, the Becks were weightless above their lighted seats. The feel of unease with the environment had returned for Wendy and Sawyer. The rest of the family noted it with either indifference or excitement. When the transport pod stopped and the doors opened, the family pushed themselves away from their seats and floated out the open portal one after the other.

On the other side of the portal, the Becks found themselves in a padded chamber once again. This one was much smaller than the one they first arrived in. The curve of the room was much more pronounced. The Becks were near the center of the habitat ring and knew it. The location of their space capsule was part of their orientation. The chamber they were in had three transport pod portals situated along the wall on the outside of the curve. Built into the inside wall of the curve was a single hatch with the label “Space Capsule 4” written on the wall beside it. Secured next to the hatch was a ship’s crewman. He was of average height and build, and with plain looks. When the Becks hesitated to move, the crewman quickly responded with words and actions.

“Go into the capsule and secure yourselves inside an acceleration pod,” the crewman instructed with a beckon of his hand.

Motivated by the continued beckoning of the crewman's hand, the Becks propelled themselves toward the hatchway. The opening was round and four feet across. The inside of the space capsule was round and ten yards in diameter. The space between the ceiling and the floor was five feet high. Fifty escape pods, arranged in three successive rings, were built into the floor at forty-five degree angles. Each of them was a one-person capsule. With a touch of their com-link to the external control panel, the lids slid down, and the interior of the pod became accessible. Each pod had the potential to become an airtight chamber, this was an emergency feature. Inside each pod was an acceleration chair and a cockpit that was linked into the ship’s mainframe computer. For individuals who had problems with confined spaces, it was a claustrophobic nightmare.

The Becks floated into the space capsule and moved down along its perimeter. Because better than half of the acceleration pods were already occupied, they were hesitant to jump into the first one they found. It took them about a minute to find the ideal grouping of five pods, which they climbed into without delay. For Wendy, the configuration of the space capsule’s interior was discomforting. In her mind, the space capsule was too cramp, and the escape pods were frighteningly similar to caskets. Sawyer found the close quarters inside the space capsule comforting. The small, enclosed, confined space helped him to deal with the sensation of perpetually falling. For the rest of the family, the space capsule was neither good nor bad. Their intrigue with the coming event held the bulk of their attentions.

The Beck family did not expect anything of great note to happen. It was common knowledge that the interior of a space capsule was the safest place anyone could be while in space. Aboard a spaceship, the space capsules were used as command and control centers, safe-rooms, and lifeboats. In times of emergency, they could be jettisoned away from the ship. During the launch and acceleration phase of a space flight, all occupants were required to be secured in a space capsule. This was a mandatory precaution. Seasoned space travelers saw it as a holdover from the time when there was a great need for this precaution.

The inertial stress generated during launch and acceleration had the potential to rend the ship apart if the Zero G Generator or any of its external components, faltered. Separated from the ship, the space capsule was a battery-operated self-sufficient spacecraft, with its own Zero G Generator. detached, it was capable of self-navigation and withstanding an immense amount of inertia while its battery lasted. But in all the years since the development of zero gravity generators, this safety system had never been used, and everyone knew this. Very few Spacers took this precaution seriously. Most did not bother to fasten themselves into the seats. In this situation, they would bring the lid of the pod up most of the way to stop themselves from floating out. Another common deviation from their assigned use was the sight of couples snuggled together in a single acceleration pod. This they would do so that they could cuddle together as they slept through acceleration and deceleration phases of a journey. Wendy was quick to take advantage of this unofficial privilege and followed Daniel into his pod. For Wendy, space capsules were reminders of the risks associated with space travel. Most of the other passengers were far more enthralled with the fact that they were about to leave the vicinity of Earth.

“Launch in ten minutes,” announced the crewman that was previously situated outside the capsule door. “The acceleration phase will last for forty minutes. After this, we will spend the next eighteen days freefalling towards our destination. You'll be free to return to the habitat ring during that time. You will have to come back here for deceleration. That will commence at roughly two hours out from the starship. Enjoy the trip.”

The crewman floated through the capsule as he made his announcement. Fifteen minutes had passed since the Becks first entered the capsule. By this time, nearly all the acceleration pods were filled with passengers. The crewman floated directly to the one pod that was secured for him by a locked lid. It opened the instant he touched it with his com-link. He slid into it with practiced ease. His pod was in the first ring out from the center of the space capsule. In the center of the space capsule were six floor-to-ceiling monitors arranged in a five-foot-high hexagon. Built into each pod was a control station with several small monitors. Each pod had the potential to operate all aspects of the Amundsen, but their activation had to be given by a command authority.

“Two minutes to launch,” the crewman yelled out.

There was no sound from the spaceship beyond the slight hum of the space capsules electronics.

“One minute to launch,” the crewman yelled out as he monitored the displays in front of him.

The Becks had been talking to one-another for the whole of their time in the space capsule. The report of the one-minute mark diverted their attentions away from these conversations and down to their personal monitors for the first time. In front of them, they could see a launch clock display ticking away the seconds. Nearly all the passengers tensed in their seats in anticipation that a sensation would register inside them when the primary thrusters ignited.

“We are thirty seconds from launch,” the crewman called out. “If you look up at the large monitors you will see something that you may never see again.”

The crewman had a magnified view of the Earth displayed on the monitors in the center of the room. The image of it nearly touched the top and bottom of the screen. Most of the passengers already had their personal monitors focused on this view. Shortly into everyone’s observation of this, the crewman began counting down from ten seconds in sync with the launch clock. At the count of zero the primary thrusters ignited. The glow from four massive engines could be seen glaring onto the video from the bottom left of the monitor. All the passengers in the space capsule searched about them for signs of some effect upon the vessel, but they saw and felt no change. Outside of the ship, the view of the Earth seemed unchanged for nearly a minute. At the end of this time, the Earth appeared to be shrinking at an infinitesimal rate. Two minutes into this, the Earth looked to be smaller on the screen by one-eighth. The black of space filled in the vacated areas along the perimeter of the monitor. As this was happening the rate of the Earth’s reduction became increasingly more obvious. After another minute, the edge of Earth’s moon began to move into view from the left side of the monitors. Two minutes later and the moon was fully visible. Distant stars and galaxies became brighter as the glow of light off the diminishing Earth became less and less pronounced. By the end of another minute, the universe looked to be growing in scope by the second. The Earth and moon appeared to be falling away at an increasingly rapid pace. In three more minutes, they were both lost from sight in the background of space.


	3. The Commission

Joshua Sloan had no idea why he had been summoned to the Bank of Sol Starcorp (BX01) or by whom. The President of KGL01’s shipping division, his boss, sent him a directive to report there without an explanation. He was instructed to give notice of his arrival to the office of BX01’s CEO, which he did the instant he set his travel bag down inside his hotel room. What made this directive even stranger for him was the paid travel and housing that was provided. Taking advantage of these arrangements meant leaving his ship behind. He had no idea why anyone at BX01 would want him without his spaceship.

The Bernard S. Redmond was a cargo spaceship. Its only function was to push and pull large container vessels around in space. Its normal crew compliment consisted of six people. However, the Redmond was just as capable of transporting sixty people in the same degree of comfort as six. Over the past eight years, this vessel had been under Joshua’s sole command. If the ship was moving, he was the captain directing its course. This was the first time that he had been separated from his command since it was given to him.

Joshua was not perturbed by this separation from his spaceship. His experiences in the Captain’s chair went back more than fifty years. He was, by this time, ninety-eight years old and had served as captain of three spaceships. The number of spaceships he served on in any capacity was twelve. Change was not an uncommon event for him, but in the past, it always came behind a request from him. He had made no such request since receiving his present command. In fact, Captain Joshua Sloan was very much pleased with his command of a small, insignificant cargo hauler. He enjoyed the absence of pressure and politics that came with this most common of all spacefaring jobs.

Immediately after graduating from an earthbound High School, Joshua was recruited into a starcorp. He was hired into the position of stockroom attendant. While working in this capacity, he started his tertiary education. By the age of twenty-eight, he had acquired a degree in aerospace engineering. Promptly after graduation, he turned his attention towards his true passion. He attended a spacefaring academy and acquired a second mate’s certificate. While working off and on as a second mate, he continued his spacefaring education. At the age of thirty-four, he acquired a master’s license in spacefaring. He captained his first spaceship at the age of forty-one.

Joshua had no interest in commanding a starship. These were sedentary crafts. They rarely moved once they reached their desired location. He turned down all offers to become a junior officer aboard one and went to work commanding spaceships that primarily moved people and domestic cargo. This initially intrigued him, but it was not the work that he wanted. Joshua wanted to captain an exploratory spaceship. He wanted to travel to the far reaches of the solar system and discover new things and new places.

Space exploration flights were multi-year journeys far away from any supply or rescue. This made them all the more exciting to Joshua. His ultimate ambition was to be the first captain to travel outside of the solar system to a neighboring star. This would be a journey that would take more than a decade, round trip. This length of time away from food and resources that starcorps and their starships provided was an extreme risk. The inherent dangers in long duration space travel limited this practice to spaceships with small crews. Starships with their large populations required supporting starships to generate the food they needed. And all starships required factory starships to maintain them.

Captain positions for exploratory spaceships were few in number and highly coveted. A competent and respected spaceship captain, Joshua patiently waited for his dues to pay off. After forty years of waiting, he gave up. The politics and pandering that came with managing passengers had taken its toll on him. He tired of being a “majordomo,” his word. What made his fatigue even worse, younger captains who were far better connected than he began receiving the coveted exploration commands that he applied for. When he finally reached the end of his patience, Captain Joshua Sloan put in a transfer request for a cargo spaceship. His request was granted. He had been comfortably ensconced on the cargo spaceship, the Bernard S. Redmond, ever since.

Starcorp BX01UTC21270705 was a cluster of four starships parked in high earth orbit. Each starship was primarily a massive habitat ring. The core of each ship was where the power plants, engines, docking bays, command capsules and space capsules were located. The largest starship and the youngest was the Berenberg. The three other starships in the cluster were the Warburg, the Giannini, and the Rothschild. The smallest starship, the Rothschild, was capable of comfortably residing 5.7 thousand people. The Berenberg had a maximum occupancy of 23 thousand.

Despite its starcorp designation, which identified it as an independent state, BX01 was owned in part by all the starcorps. Buying shares in it was a prerequisite to participating in the myriad of financial services it provided. On top of being the savings and lending institution for the starcorps of Sol, BX01 generated the currency they were dependent upon to grow and prosper. It provided the central marketplace for the exchange of commerce between starcorps. It sold and maintained commercial insurance to their members. Within their starships, BX01 leased the office spaces, storage facilities and showrooms the starcorp community needed to conduct business with each other. BX01 was the hub of the starcorp system in Sol space.

Joshua was instructed to report to the office of the CEO of BX01 at 1000 UTC of the following morning. This gave him little more than six hours to rest and to prepare himself for his appointment. He got up after four hours of sleep and showered. Standing six-feet-three-inches tall, Joshua was an impressive stature of a man. He had a handsome face with chiseled features. Physically, he looked to be in his mid-forties. He maintained a short crop of light brown hair on his head with streaks of gray along the sides. Sideburns connected his hair to a thin and neatly trimmed mustache and beard. This affectation came into existence shortly after he took command of the Redmond. He fancied himself a bit of a rebel after taking command of a cargo ship and abandoned the clean-shaven look that nearly all aspiring spaceship captains maintained. He adorned himself in his captain’s uniform and set off for his meeting at 0945 UTC.

At 1000 UTC to the minute, Joshua arrived outside the large glass doors of the executive offices of BX01UTC21270705. The twin sliding doors opened automatically when he came to within four feet of them. He walked through the doorway without hesitation. The reception room on the other side of the doors was large and oval. Brightly lit and richly carpeted, the colors tan, white, light gray, and light blue dominated the room’s color spectrum. A large reception desk was fixed just opposite the door on the far side of the room. Two, attractive, women were seated on the other side. A floor to ceiling partition was situated behind them. It concealed another room that was accessible by walking around the ends of the partition. To the left and right of the reception room, twenty lounge chairs were situated evenly about four coffee tables, two to a side. Six well attired individuals were seated in various locations within this waiting area. Five of them were ensconced behind their display goggles. They occasionally maneuvered their hands in front of their goggles to turn a page or to expand or contract an image. The fifth individual, a man, sat straight and alert. He took note Joshua’s arrival.

After walking through the doorway, Joshua continued to the reception desk and stopped. He saw no reason to be nervous about being there. He expected all to be explained to him shortly, and he thought this explanation was likely to be something not to his liking. His demeanor displayed neither disdain nor excitement with being there. He gave the waiting receptionist a bland expression as he prepared to make his address.

“Hello, how may I help you?” The receptionist questioned with a smile.

An instant before Joshua could respond, the man, who had been watching in the waiting area, spoke as he walked towards Joshua.

“I’ll take this, Carol,” the gentleman spoke just as he stopped two feet off to Joshua’s right.

Joshua turned his attention to the slim, medium height man who was standing before him with an erect posture and blank expression. His attire was professional and elegant in appearance. In his left hand, he held a tablet. He looked to be a person of some authority, but Joshua suspected he was an underling to a still larger authority. Carol deferred to him with a nod and a smile before turning her attention down toward her desk.

“Thank you for being on time, Captain Sloan,” the gentleman continued a second later. “I am Mitchell Sanders, the office manager here. If you will follow me, I will take you to your meeting.”

Joshua saw no reason to respond verbally to this greeting. He thought it too hurried and rigid to be anything more than just a formality to be dispensed with. He gave the office manager a nod of approval and waited for his reaction. Mitchell provided this an instant later; he turned and walked around the reception desk and through the entryway to the office area behind. Joshua kept pace with him, one step behind and to the right.

Mitchell led Joshua into an office area that accommodated six secretaries and six desks. A pair of ceiling-to-floor doors were on the far side of the room. Kent Ackerman, CEO, was stenciled on them. Once they were inside the office area, Mitchell turned to the right and led Joshua down a hallway. Along the way, they came across two office doors on the left. One was for the Senior Executive Vice President of Human Resources, and the second was for the Senior Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Mitchell passed them both without so much as a look in their directions. At the far end of the hall, they came to a pair of double doors. The stencil on them read, “Auditorium.” Mitchell came to a stop in front of them, turned back to face Joshua and extended the tablet towards him.

“Before you go in, Captain Sloan,” said Mitchell in a polite and professional tone. “I will need you to sign this.”

Joshua took the tablet right away and began perusing the document displayed on it. Moments into it, he blurted out the question that was on the tip of his tongue.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a confidentiality agreement,” Mitchell answered quickly and without expression. “In essence, it says that you understand that you’re not to publicize or disclose anything you might hear or discuss in this meeting under penalty of total forfeiture of all shares you possess in any member starcorp of BX01.”

Joshua studied the document again for another few seconds. At the end of this time, he abutted the tablet to his com-link bracelet and held it there until he heard a beep. He then held the bracelet up and spoke to it with a one-word command, “signature.” He then affixed his signature with a touch of his thumb to the bottom corner of the tablet.

A second later, Joshua verified with a look that his electronic signature was added to the document. Satisfied with the result, he extended the tablet back to its owner.

Mitchell took a couple of seconds to verify the signature before opening one of the doors and ushering Joshua into the room.

“They’re waiting for you down the hall,” Mitchell reported politely before closing the door between them.

Joshua turned away from the door and made his way down a short corridor. When he reached the far end of the corridor, he could see that he was at the rostrum end of a lecture hall. The stage he came out upon was un-elevated and approximately fifteen yards across. A single rectangular table with a chair was situated in the middle of this stage. On the wall behind the stage was a large, white screen. The seating area in front of the stage ascended one foot with each row back. A total of eight rows filled the seating area of the hall. Each row accommodated fifteen chairs. Two staircases separated them into three segments. A single writing counter extended across each row in each segment. Nearly one-third of the chairs were occupied by someone that was looking at him.

Joshua wandered toward the center of the stage with unsure movements. He came to a stop just in front of the table before turning full forward to the assembly. At this moment, he was more confused than he had ever been. He had no idea who these people were or what they wanted with him. The instant he turned toward them; he began scanning the room in search of any familiar faces. He had just started his search when the person seated front and center of auditorium spoke.

“Have a seat, Captain Sloan.”

Joshua’s confusion with all that was happening here caused him to hesitate for just an instant. He then turned about, walked around the table, and sat in the chair. Once he was comfortably seated, he returned to scanning the faces in the room again. His mind was trying to make sense of this gathering before him. A couple of seconds into his deliberation, the person seated front and center began to speak again.

“I’m sure you’re confused about all of this, Captain Sloan, so let me explain one thing, right away, before we get started: You are looking at the Congress of the BX01 Starcorp League. And I am Eric Gourmand, Chairperson of the League.”

At different times before this, Joshua had been confused, surprised, suspicious, and even a little impressed by different aspects of this event. However, for the first time since he received his travel orders, Joshua Sloan was awed. At this moment, he knew by the influential weight of the personages assembled here, that whatever this was about, it was big. The BX01 Starcorp League was made up of representatives from every member starcorp in the solar system. Its sole purpose was to author, vote upon, and enact laws and agreements that affected all member starcorps in the Solar System. After taking a pause to digest what he had just heard, Joshua reacted with a one-word response.

“Okay.”

“Do you have any idea why you are here, Captain Sloan?” Chairperson Gourmand questioned with an inquisitive expression.

“No, I have no idea what this is about,” Joshua answered with a hint of defensiveness in his voice.

“Not even a guess?” Gourmand questioned back with the same expression as before.

Joshua took a moment to think about this inquiry. His suspicion was that this was about something that he did or participated in at some point in his past. However, despite this deliberation, he could think of nothing that warranted a reaction of this weight.

“No, I don’t,” Joshua answered after a thoughtful shake of his head.

Chairperson Gourmand paused in his inquiry to give Joshua a quick analysis. The other representatives sat in quiet contemplation. After a few seconds, Gourmand re-engaged his discourse with Joshua.

“In your academy years, you wrote a paper entitled “The Next Full-Scale War.” Do you recall that?”

“Yes, that was when I was studying for my Engineering Degree,” Joshua stated with more than a hint of surprise. “Is that what this is about?”

“That paper has come to our attention,” Gourmand answered flatly.

“Do you still believe what you wrote in that paper?” The representative seated in the eighth row, second from the left softly questioned.

Joshua had no trouble hearing the question. The auditorium was one large microphone and sound system. The computer that controlled the system captured and amplified all spoken words. It could also be directed to ignore the speech of any person or persons within the room. This was initiated via a control panel application that was automatically uploaded into the com-links of all present. The computer would also switch on a small lamp in front of the speaker to give a visual cue of his or her location. Joshua noted this illumination about the representative who just spoke and looked toward him to respond to the query.

“It seems like the logical progression for military conflicts in space,” Joshua answered in an unsure voice.

“You described a weapon’s platform in your paper that seems pretty remarkable,” the representative seated in the third row, tenth from the left spoke up suddenly. “Do you think this weapon will really work the way you described?”

Joshua was taken aback by this sudden question.

“Well, yes,” Joshua began after a pause to consider. “If the power plant, drive system, and weapons systems can be engineered to the scale and yield that I outlined then…”

“Can they be engineered to those levels today?” The representative seated in the second row thirteenth from the left abruptly questioned, effectively cutting Joshua off in mid-statement.

“I think we can definitely come close,” Joshua responded with a puzzled expression.

“How close?” The representative seated in the sixth row, third from the left challenged.

Joshua was totally baffled by the series of rapid-fire questions. He hesitated to give the entire room a look of bewilderment. After taking a few seconds to breathe deeply and to ponder the question, he commenced to give the answer that he feared to speak, but that he suspected they needed to hear.

“I believe it’s possible to engineer a weapon’s system as good as or better than what I described in that paper.”

Immediately after speaking these words, the room full of representatives switched off their microphones and turned their attentions toward each other. Joshua could hear the murmur of numerous whispered exchanges. But he could not discern the gist of any specific conversation. After several moments of these private dialogues, the representative seated in the third row, sixth from the left reconnected with the microphone system and addressed Joshua.

“And you believe this weapon will perform to the extent that you described?”

All the representatives went quiet and waited for the answer to this question. Joshua paused for a second to note that he had all their attentions and then gave the answer that he knew they needed to hear.

“Yes, I do.”

In the several seconds that followed this answer, the representatives studied Joshua. This was prompted by the tenor of his answer. All of them were looking for evidence of confidence or lack thereof. At the end of this silence, Gourmand put his earlier question to Joshua again.

“Can you guess now what this is all about?”

Joshua did have a guess now, and after a brief hesitation to consider if he should express his thought, he began to do just that.

“My paper was about a possible future war in space. My guess is that you’re contemplating just such an event.”

Chairperson Gourmand studied Joshua as he spoke these words. For the next few seconds after, he formulated his response.

“For more than seventy years starcorps have managed a fractured and hostile Earth through the aid we provide and through our business dealings with them.” Gourmand laid his forearms on the counter in front of him and leaned forward as he continued his dissertation. “And this has worked to keep the peace between the states of Earth, for the most part. But in recent years, it has been working too well.”

The other representatives sat quietly as Gourmand explained the events that brought about this meeting.

“The Earthers, in general, have always hated us. They live in a belief that we’ve stolen something from them and that we could have done more for them after the Third World War. This hatred has never been a problem for us simply because up until now they have always needed us.”

“Don’t they still need us?” Joshua questioned with a puzzled expression.

“No, they don’t,” Gourmand countered with a slight shake of his head. “The Earthers can manage on their own. All they really need to do at this point is just pull together. For the past twenty years, we’ve just been making life easier for them. Their only obstacle to self-reliance has been an absence of unity. Our most recent analysis of the political winds on Earth suggests that there is a growing movement for greater cooperation between the states.”

“And that’s not a good thing?” Joshua said with a puzzled expression.

“A growing call for Earth autonomy from starcorps is fueling this political movement,” Gourmand explained with a stern look. “It’s bleeding across all borders like an infection.”

“I don’t understand,” Joshua questioned with a bewildered expression.

Joshua knew that starcorps had no love for the Earthers. For most Spacers, Earth was seen as a drain on their resources and a hindrance to their growth. A sense of obligation was the driving force behind their continuing expenditure of aid. He knew that nearly all Spacers were looking forward to the day they could stop carrying Earth on their books. For Joshua, he did not see how an autonomous Earth was a problem.

“Beneath this newfound solidarity is a growing call for starcorps to be reined in under Earth’s dominion,” Gourmand explained with a stare.

“They want to reestablish starcorps back under the control of Earth’s Governments?” Joshua whispered with a questioning look.

“This isn’t anything new,” Gourmand explained calmly. “There have been Earthers that have been grumbling for the past century that everything we have belong to them. And in a general sense, they’re right. But legally speaking they have no claim of ownership. All of that disappeared in the War when the Governments of old Earth died out and stock markets crumbled out of existence.”

“We became an independent entity when that happened,” the Representative seated to the right of front and center declared vehemently. “Earthers own nothing of us.”

“We have been trying to live up to our obligations to Earth,” Gourmand defended. “And I suppose we could have done better at that,” he confessed with a hint of regret in his tone. “But we never abandoned our duty to Earth. And to be honest here, it never mattered how much aid we give them, there will always be a large segment of Earth’s inhabitants that will resent us for not doing more. And that segment is coalescing into a powerful political movement as we speak.”

“I haven’t heard anything about this,” Joshua reported with a shake of his head.

Earth was a puzzle board of independent state governments. Most of these governments were republics or quasi-republics with no small thanks to the influence of starcorps. All the Earth-state governments have spent the last century working to maintain their independence from their neighbors. However, despite this zeal for independence, they could not help but come to appreciate the value of cooperation. This appreciation grew stronger over time. For the lay person, the commercial interaction between these states seemed to be nothing more than a trickle. For the BX01 Starcorp League, who was keeping a close watch on the changes on Earth, they signaled a potentially seismic shift in their relationship with Earth.

“The lines of communication between the states are beginning to stretch around the globe,” Gourmand reported soberly. “What makes this even more extraordinary is that it is not being instigated by us. The Alberta Alliance has been making overtures to dozens of States—powerful states around the globe—attempting to form an alliance—states they have no trade relations with. And all of this is being done in opposition to the Thames Trade and Investment Summit, which would have included us.”

“These backroom dealings sponsored by the Alberta Alliance have been undermining our efforts to officially create trading partners between the Earth-states and us.” The Representative seated to the right of Gourmand added glumly.

Surprised by the report, Joshua began a response with a questioning expression.

“Why would they do that?”

“Because Prime Minster Edward Eckhart does not want us recognized as independent States,” the representative seated in the fifth row, twelve from the left answered off the tip of his tongue.

Joshua was slightly confused by this answer. Gourmand noted this and promptly clarified it for him.

“It’s in the language of the accord that we drafted.”

“They’ll take our aid, but they won’t sign any investment treaties with us,” the representative seated in the fourth row, eleventh from the left quickly added.

“Why can’t we just pull our support for the Alberta Alliance?” Joshua questioned with a slightly perplexed expression.

“Because this goes a lot further than just the Alberta Alliance,” Gourmand explained in a lecturing tone. “If we start withholding aid to large segments of Earth’s populace, we’ll do more harm than good. The Earthers will grow to hate us even more than they do now.”

“And you think Eckhart is going to come after us militarily?” Joshua questioned in a knowing tone.

“Our best analysts are saying that he will do just that if he can pool enough States behind him,” Gourmand responded calmly.

“Can he do that?” Joshua questioned the room.

“We think it’s possible, but not in the short term,” the representative to the right of Gourmand reported blandly.

“But we still want to be able to defend ourselves,” the representative seated in the sixth row, four from the left announced. “If he forms a block of twenty or more states, they will be able to out produce us in war-crafts by fifty to one. And that’s a conservative estimate.”

“And they have the numbers to man those war-crafts,” the representative seated in the third row, sixth from the left added an instant behind.

“So, you’re planning on taking the fight to the Earth?” Joshua asked tentatively.

“No, we’re not doing that,” Gourmand quickly corrected. “An attack on the Earth would turn the entire planet against us. We would be defining ourselves, in their minds, as the enemy.”

Joshua could see that they had given a lot of thought to this. But he could not help thinking that the representatives were making a good public relations decision and a bad tactical one. He was reluctant to point this out to this impressive and powerful assembly before him. However, after considering that all their thinking was based on a fanciful weapons system that only existed within his head, he could not stop himself.

“Representatives, I feel I should tell you that, in my estimation, our only chance for victory against numbers like that can only come through a massive preemptive first strike against Earth’s military bases and spaceports.”

Joshua scanned the faces of the Representatives as he waited for a response to his assertion. They all appeared unfazed by what he had just said. The absence of any challenges to his estimation had him confused during the three seconds of silence that followed it. When a response did come, it was the last thing he expected.

“We came to that conclusion as well,” Gourmand confessed.

To his surprise, Joshua noted that the entire room full of Representatives appeared to be quietly in agreement. Not one of them so much as fidgeted in reaction to this declaration. Joshua devoted a couple of seconds to this observation and then focused his attention back to Gourmand.

“That’s why we’re not planning for a war with the Earthers,” Gourmand explained casually. “We prefer another solution. We’re looking at your weapons platform as—an insurance policy.”

Joshua was at first reluctant to inquire about this other solution. He did not think it was his place to ask about their machinations. But this limitation galled him when he came to the realization that he still did not know what they wanted of him. The only thing he did know was that they were interested in the weapons platform he described in a paper he wrote more than sixty years earlier. He immediately dismissed the idea that they wanted him to build it. He knew this because the weapon he wrote about was little more than an overall description. They had to know that it would take a large team of engineers to create it. Because of this reasoning, he concluded that he had every right to know how he would fit into their plans and exactly what they wanted of him. So, he put the question to them with a stern edge to his tone.

“Representatives, without knowing what your plans are or how I factor into them, I have no way of knowing how I can help you.”

Gourmand gave Joshua a studied look for several seconds before turning his attention to the Representatives behind him.

“Are there any objections?” Gourmand questioned, as he looked over his left shoulder and then his right.

After a short silent pause, Gourmand turned his attention back to Joshua. He gave him another brief study before speaking again.

“Are you familiar with the Bridge Competition, Captain Sloan?”

Joshua gave the question a few seconds of thought before giving an answer.

“It’s an awards program to encourage the development of a star-drive,” Joshua responded with a look of suspicion.

No sooner had this answer been given did Gourmand begin his explanation to Joshua regarding his presence there.

“Thirteen years ago, a Doctor Herbert Andersen submitted an equation he claimed was proof that it is possible to manipulate time while moving through space. His theory was tested fifteen years ago, on a miniature scale and—it worked. We now know the science for building a star-drive. What has been holding up its development is the power requirements and the mechanics for accelerating a spaceship to a minimum of thirty-seven percent of the speed of light.”

“Why thirty-seven percent?” Joshua questioned with a shrug.

“Thirty-seven percent is the minimum velocity that our power production capabilities can manage,” Gourmand answered with a confused expression.

Joshua was even more confused and said as much in his next question.

“What does that mean?”

“Apparently, if we’re moving at the speed of light then we could create this tear in time/space with a single flashlight battery,” Gourmand commenced to explain with an expression of nonchalance. “The amount of energy needed to create this rupture increases exponentially as we back away from light speed. The mass of the ship coupled with the speed that it’s traveling determines the amount of energy needed. At thirty-six percent of light speed, we lack the technical know how to build a reactor powerful enough to create a time/space tear large enough for a marble to fit through.”

After a pause to digest this information, Joshua acknowledged his understanding with a nod and a soft, “okay.” Seconds after noting this, Gourmand continued with his explanation regarding Joshua’s presence there.

“The scientists say that once we’re through this rupture, time becomes pliable. Apparently, space can be expanded or contracted in ‘null space…,’ their words. Once we’re through the rupture, the energy needed to manipulate time is minuscule. The minimum speed for all starships is thirty-seven percent of the speed of light. Reaching this speed within a reasonable time frame has been our biggest obstacle to a workable star-drive.”

“Has been?” Joshua questioned with a blank stare.

“A couple of years ago, that would have meant burning the thrusters of a spaceship, continuously, at full power for more than a week,” Gourmand promptly explained.

“At full power, the thrusters would burn out in less than three hours,” Joshua spoke out with a quick shake of his head. “At a quarter power, they wouldn’t last much more than thirty hours. The only propulsion system that has ever been capable of continuous operation for that amount of time was an ion engine, and it couldn’t reach half these speeds in a decade. The only practical propulsion system is the high G-repulsor engines that we’re using now. And with these, you’re talking about running them for as long as we dare, rest and prep them, and then repeat for as many times as it takes to get to these speeds. That’s one to three months, assuming there’s no catastrophic breakdown along the way.”

“Precisely…” Gourmand agreed with a slight nod of his head. “Three months ago, we produced the first repulsor engine that’s twice as powerful as anything we have now and is capable of twenty hours of continuous operation at full power. This engine can accelerate a starship to these speeds in less than fifteen hours at maximum thrust. We began mass producing them a month ago. Retrofitting all starcorp starships and spaceships with them along with additional Zero-G Generators, to offset the increased stresses; and improved power plants, to support these upgrades is set to begin in another month. To keep the temporal field generators a secret from Earth, we will install them at the last moment. When this is finished, our plan is to leave the Sol System.”

Gourmand paused to allow Joshua to absorb this information. But this was unnecessary. Joshua had no trouble comprehending what was said. Halfway through this explanation, he knew where Gourmand was going. It was simply the scope of this solution that had him mesmerized. After a considerable pause, Gourmand began to tell Joshua what would be expected of him.

“What we want from you is a military option.”

Joshua hesitated to react, but when he did, it came with an expression of bewilderment.

“I don’t understand.”

The representative seated to the right of Gourmand quickly responded.

“When the Earthers figure out what we’re doing, they will most likely step up their plans for us. Up until now we haven’t had a need for a standing military. Should the Earthers act against us we will need something in place to hold them at bay.”

A second behind this statement, the representative seated to the left of Gourmand continued where the previous representative left off.

“Captain Sloan, we’re prepared to provide you with a budget and the resources you need to build this war machine that you outlined in your paper.”

“We estimate that it will take us six years at the most to put all of this into place,” Gourmand began a second behind. “We believe we can keep all of this a secret from the Earthers for roughly half that time. And we think it will take them another one-to-two years to amass a space force large enough to be of any real threat to us. What we’re offering you, Captain Sloan, is a commission. We want you to build your war machine. And if necessary, we want you to place it and yourself in harm’s way.”

Joshua reflexed inwardly while considering this offer. Before he could produce his answer, Gourmand spoke again.

“Before you answer, I need you to understand what we are asking. You and your war machine will be the rear guard. Your job will be to hold a line for as long as we need you to, or for as long as you can. You and your war machine will be a secondary concern.”


	4. Trouble in Purgatory

London, England is a vague resemblance of the city it once was one hundred years earlier. The historic buildings were mostly hidden behind dozens of skyscrapers that were built in the century before World War III. The towering edifices of glass and steel appeared to be the only buildings that were being methodically maintained. All the structures built before the twentieth century looked to be little more than patched up ruins. Streets that once catered to hundreds of thousands of automobiles daily were mostly quiet of vehicular traffic. In its place, massive numbers of people moved about on foot or bicycle. An electric vehicle would occasionally whirr through the midst of this mass of humanity. Each block was its own market with scantily put together kiosks situated along their sides. Goods of all type could be found peddled here.

At the end of World War III, the country known as Great Britain broke apart into seven fortress states, not counting the island of Ireland. The British Isles was made up of eleven States and more than two dozen independent islands. The megacity of London was in Thames, the State that encompassed the southeastern corner of the Island of Great Britain. In size, it consisted of one-fifth of the state that was formerly known as England.

A third of the state of Thames was comprised of the city of London. One of fifty-four megacities around the globe, metropolitan London had expanded to ten times the area it was a century earlier. Its population had grown fifty times greater over the same time. Better than half this growth was due to repercussions from World War III. The land area of the State encompassed the southeast quarter of the island nation that was once known as the United Kingdom. Better than eighty percent of the population was compressed into the city of London.

The current governing authority of Thames is Prime Minister James Hagerman. Despite his eighty-six years, Hagerman was a surprisingly agile man. Standing six-feet-five-inches in height, he was slender of build. Short thinning white hair covered his entire head. The sag in his facial features came closer to betraying his age than his physique did. His carriage and movements seemed more in place for a man half his years.

Hagerman had held claim to the title of Prime Minister of Thames for the past eleven years. This was through no accident. Competition for the position was fierce in every election he participated in. Despite these electorial battles, his victories were always by a sizeable margin. James Hagerman was a very popular politician with people of both sexes, all ages and races. His appeal extended far beyond the borders of Thames. His appeal even reached out into the solar system. His charisma and his grandfatherly demeanor earned him the love and trust of most moderate and passive voters. The populace that was militantly anti-starcorp voted against him in mass.

The relationship between Hagerman and the starcorps was a powerful one. Over the past ten years, the starcorps directed more aid to Thames through Hagerman than any other state on the planet. These gifts were a testament to the importance of Hagerman to the starcorps. His ability to sway large blocks of people to vote as he directed was a powerful utility. It was more valuable to the starcorps because of Hagerman’s passive stance with regards to them. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Hagerman sold the agendas of the starcorps to the masses and they favored his ministry with aid and trade that he converted into jobs and votes.

The political landscape of Earth was divided between politicians that had taken one of two popular positions within a single argument. To win a seat in a political election, it was a given that they had to be either fiercely anti-starcorp or passively so. The passions of the people of Earth were so high on the subject that no politician could reasonably expect to win an election by sitting on the fence with regards to it, and they had less of a chance if they expressed support for the starcorps. The Earthers hatred of the starcorps dwarfed most other concerns and was near to the equal in importance as food, housing, and health care. These basic needs made the starcorps an aversion that they had to endure. Starcorps’ in vitro meat factories, farms, and access to an abundance of raw materials were resources that Earthers could ill afford to ignore.

Prime Minister Hagerman’s public position towards the starcorps was mildly hostile. He quietly echoed the discontent most Earthers had toward their ex co-inhabitants that abandoned the planet for the comforts of space. He chafed at the starcorps’ manipulation and meddling in the affairs of Earth. He railed against the starcorps’ practice of lording over them as if they were the authoritarians and Earth was their subordinate. But in private consultation with starcorp emissaries, Hagerman was a completely different person.

“Please have a seat,” Hagerman proffered to the professionally attired gentleman standing just inside of his study.

Neil Fitzgerald was not a handsome man. The features of his face were narrow, long, and angular. Despite this genetic disposition, he managed to exude an attractive appearance. Well-groomed and perfectly tailored, his stance was erect and proud. He was dressed in a gray suit with short, high, lapels and a tieless white shirt with a wing tipped collar. Ties were an affectation that was rarely used in this age.

“Thank you,” Fitzgerald acknowledged an instant before setting off for the sofa to his right.

Hagerman was already standing in front of the opposing sofa. A coffee table was situated between them. Fitzgerald sat his five-foot-eleven-inch frame down in the middle of the sofa. Hagerman did likewise. The two men were alone in the room. Fitzgerald’s personal assistant waited just outside the closed doors to the study. Hagerman’s Chief of Staff kept him company there.

“How’s the family?” Fitzgerald inquired with a pleasant demeanor.

“They’re fine,” Hagerman answered with a nod of approval for the query. “I would inquire about your family but spacers don’t have health problems, do they?” Hagerman added with a smile.

Fitzgerald gave him a half grin before responding while displaying an amused expression.

“They’re rare, but not unheard of.”

Fitzgerald was a BX01 lawyer that had spent the last ten years of his life serving as a delegate to the state of Thames on behalf of the starcorps. His association with Hagerman went back for the whole of this time.

“So, Neil, what can I do for you?” Hagerman questioned with a hint of exasperation.

Hagerman was, fairly, certain that Fitzgerald was there to discuss the Thames/BX01 investment treaty that he recently attempted to get ratified. Unbeknownst to the public, the agreement was authored by the starcorps. This fact was never disclosed but generally believed. The agreement encompassed the eleven states that made up the British Isles at this time. It required all eleven states to be signatories. The benefit for the eleven states was a large investment by the starcorps in their industrial development. For the starcorps, it meant an insignificant dip in their expenditure on Earth.

“Prime Minister, the League is interested in knowing when you will be making your next attempt to ratify our investment treaty.”

The League that Neil Fitzgerald spoke of was the BX01 Starcorp League Congress. It consisted of representatives from all member starcorps.

“And they would like to know what adjustments they can make to help get it passed,” Fitzgerald added behind his first statement.

“It’s dead,” Hagerman responded with finality in his tone. “There won’t be a second attempt.”

Fitzgerald was not surprised by this answer. The agreement was decisively defeated in the first attempt to ratify it. He understood enough about the politics on the British Isles to know that political support for it would likely be weaker the second time around, but his purpose there today was to sell the idea of another attempt to the one person that was indispensable to this effort.

“The Board is prepared to make major changes to the agreement if needed,” Fitzgerald countered without hesitation.

“I’m not going to do it,” Hagerman calmly responded. “The price is too high.”

“With some adjustments and a heavier push, we can get it through,” Fitzgerald asserted with confidence.

“There is no we in this,” Hagerman argued back with a stern expression. “I lost a lot of political capital in the first attempt. I can’t afford to try again.”

Fitzgerald understood what Hagerman was saying here. By trying to push through a largely unpopular investment treaty, he alienated a lot of voters he might need in the next election.

“James, we need this,” Fitzgerald emphasized by using the Prime Minister’s given name, “and so do you.”

Hagerman was quick to pick up the veiled threat in Fitzgerald’s remark. However, the tenor of his response did not do justice to the anger it engendered inside of him.

“Are you suggesting that the League will renege on their promise to me?”

Fitzgerald was reluctant to make that statement. He had no knowledge that that would be the case. Just the same, he wanted this thought inside Hagerman’s mind.

“This agreement is important to us,” Fitzgerald insisted in a soft voice.

Hagerman gave Fitzgerald a steady look for several seconds before asking the question that had just unfolded in his thoughts.

“Why is this agreement so important?” Hagerman questioned with a frown on his face. “Why now?”

Hagerman understood the monetary value of this agreement. He knew that it would lessen the amount of aid that the starcorps had to provide to Thames and the British Isles in general. He knew that in the long run it would be financially profitable to both sides. What he did not know was the reason behind the urgency that the starcorps were giving it. In his mind, this agreement, or one like it, was destined to happen at some point in the future. He saw no need to force it into effect sooner than it was ready to happen. This thinking seemed more valid to him when he factored in the minuscule affect this agreement would have on the overall financial health of the starcorps.

Fitzgerald took a noticeably deep breath as he studied Hagerman for several seconds. He knew that the answer to the question that Hagerman put to him was not a secret, but he was never given specific instructions to tell him. This conflict was a debate in his mind for about five seconds. At the end of this deliberation, he concluded that he had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

“We see this agreement as the beginning of a reformation that will engulf the planet,” Fitzgerald began with an earnest expression. “We believe that if we can tie the eleven states of the British Isles together into a collective agreement with us then we can—induce a reconstruction of the British Government of old.”

“You’re talking about rebuilding industry and commerce clear across the British Isles,” Hagerman pondered out.

“Yes,” Fitzgerald acknowledged. “A decade from now we can see Great Britain as the most powerful state on the planet.”

“And the rest of the world will have to follow our lead to keep up,” Hagerman added on in a knowing tone of voice.

“That’s what we’re hoping for,” Fitzgerald agreed with a nod.

Hagerman thought about this for a moment and then he softly shook his head before speaking.

“It’s not going to work,” Hagerman began in a soft voice. “The political climate right now won’t let it happen.”

“It can happen,” Fitzgerald insisted, quickly. “The British Isles are the perfect starting point. You have history to bind you together. The social/political makeups of the eleven states are much the same. And the starcorps are prepared to make a massive investment in this project.”

“It will never pass,” Hagerman countered in a gruff voice. “The opposition against the starcorps holding the financial reins to the redevelopment of Earth is too great.”

“But you can push it through,” Fitzgerald argued back. “With the right leverage, the heads of the other ten states of the British Isles will follow your lead.”

“You don’t get it,” Hagerman countered emphatically. “Local politics doesn’t exist on Earth when it comes to the starcorps. Every deal we make with you is scrutinized and debated by political leaders all over the world, and this agreement has caused a firestorm of reactions. It’s never going to go through as long as Eckhart and politicians like him are telling everyone that the starcorps are trying to buy Earth.”

Fitzgerald took a moment to garner his self for the response he planned to give. At the end of this, he gave Hagerman a fierce stare and spoke.

“Prime Minister, we see ourselves moving toward an armed conflict with politicians like Eckhart at some point in the future. We must do something to change the political landscape on Earth, and we have to start now.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hagerman responded after shaking his head with incredulity. “The Eckharts of the world are a century away from doing anything other than just talk.”

“Our best analysts are predicting thirty years at the most,” Fitzgerald softly countered.

Hagerman took a pause to give a shake of his head with a huff of laughter before responding with a look of incredulity.

“Your best analysts are paranoid.”

“Prime Minister, we need you to do this,” Fitzgerald quickly asserted with a severe expression.

Hagerman had become exasperated with this subject. From his perspective, he appeared to be talking to someone that was incompetent regarding Earth politics. He saw the reformation of the British Isles into a single state as something that was bound to happen on its own, and that this would likely happen within the next fifty to one-hundred years, so long as the starcorps kept their distance. He knew that it was public opposition to the starcorps that killed the first attempt at the Thames/BX01 investment treaty. He feared a second attempt would crush his political career. He had little doubt that his staunchest allies would abandon him in favor of salvaging their own jobs.

Hagerman saw his political future as being tied to the hard realities of the people and politicians of Earth. In his mind and in the minds of most Earthers, Spacers were dreamers that gambled on pie in the sky causes. He had neither love nor hate for the people of the starcorps. In contrast to what a significant portion of Earthers believed, he understood that the starcorps’ secession from Earth’s authority was inspired by a sense of self-preservation and was not to a belief that they were the inherent leaders of humankind.

There was no doubt in Hagerman’s mind that there were some in the starcorps who believed they were the future of humankind and that these Spacers were also of the belief that Earthers should defer to the guidance of the starcorps. But he saw this as a fool’s folly and he found much amusement in the Spacers that thought like this. In Hagerman’s eyes, the starcorps was a temporary occurrence. He saw them as something to use to the Earth’s advantage, and there was no doubt in his mind that they would be reintegrated with Earth at some point in the future.

In Hagerman’s view of the future, Earth would one day return to industrial prominence. He saw the feudal states of Earth as a temporary condition, and he believed that they had to congeal into a collective government out of necessity. Hagerman had no doubt that when this happened, the starcorps would become obsolete. He was not the only politician to think this way. This was a common selling point for moderate politicians. They all believed that the unification of Earth and the development of their industrial potential would force the starcorps to join them or go bankrupt. For the ambitious, earthbound politicians and industrialists, the future of their planet was sparkling bright. In their eyes, only a fool gambled on the starcorps ahead of Earth.

“I’m telling you, it’s not going to happen,” Hagerman began with an inflection of finality in his tone. “It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of effort. And to even try would do more harm than good.”


	5. Deal, or No Deal

“Hagerman has just announced that he will not be pursuing a revised version of his investment treaty,” Peter Carr reported a second after walking into the Prime Minister Eckhart’s Office.

“Of course he won’t,” George Wilkinson asserted forcefully. “He knows when he’s been beaten.”

It was a crisp spring morning in Edmonton when Edward Eckhart called his three most valued Ministers into a meeting. There was no vitally important subject on the agenda. The Prime Minister of the Alberta Alliance was using this time to get updates on the projects that were of concern to him. He allocated ten minutes once a week for this purpose. More often than not, he used the bulk of this time socializing with his Ministers or discussing things that were not on the agenda. The reason behind these off subject discussions was usually because of the need to fill in the unused time. What discourse there was on the status of the affairs of the Ministers was usually limited to brief reports. Anything of real importance that happened within their respective spheres was always brought to Eckhart’s attention at, or soon after, the time of its occurrence. The Thames/BX01 Investment treaty was not on the list of subjects to discuss at this meeting. However, the subject was of great interest to Eckhart.

“The agreement was never his,” Prime Minister Eckhart grumbled out from behind a frown and with a lecturing inflection. “The starcorps dreamed up that idea, and they will try again.”

“But no one is going to support it now,” Carr softly declared with a slight shake of his head.

There was a couple of seconds of silence after this during which Eckhart and Wilkinson mulled over this statement with looks of satisfaction. At the end of this time, Ronald Kaplan hesitantly annunciated the thought that came to his mind.

“Maybe not now, but eventually everyone will.”

From behind his desk, Eckhart gave Kaplan a look of displeasure from out the corner of his eyes. A second later he turned his attention back to his pondering, without the look of satisfaction.

Seated in front of Eckhart, on the far side of his desk, were three of his Ministers. In the chair to the far left was Peter Carr, his Minister of State. Standing close to five-feet-eight-inches tall, Carr was a thin, almost frail, looking man. In age he appeared to be in his mid-sixties. In actuality, he was forty-seven years old. His propensity for displays of intense concentration, coupled with his unflattering eyeglasses, and poor attention to his attire gave others the impression that he was an exceptionally intelligent man, which was not untrue. In the center chair was George Wilkinson, Minister of Defense. Standing five-feet-ten-inches tall, he was a mildly rotund man that looked to be in his mid-sixties. His health and vigor disguised the fact that he was seventy-two years old. His scarred face and menacing demeanor advertised the fact that he was someone with a violent past. Ronald Kaplan, Eckhart’s Minister of Public Works, was seated in the far-right chair. Forty-six years old, bland in countenance, and a stance of just under six-feet in height, he was physically the least distinctive of the three. There was nothing in his appearance to separate him from the average middle-aged man on the street.

“What does that mean?” Wilkinson queried after noting Eckhart’s failure to respond to Kaplan’s remark.

Kaplan was reluctant to expand on this statement. Speaking it in the first place was almost a slip of the tongue. He knew from experience that this was thinking that Eckhart was loathed to hear. But there were times when he felt it was needed to be said, and he decided this was one of those times.

“Sooner or later someone will set up a foreign investment treaty with the starcorps,” Kaplan explained in a nonchalant delivery. “And when it happens the other States will follow one after the other. This defeat is just delaying the inevitable.”

“Nothing is inevitable,” Eckhart quickly contradicted with an angry scowl.

Always quick to rally behind Eckhart, Wilkinson echoed this sentiment with a resolute, “that’s right.”

Kaplan immediately recognized that this was technically true. But he also saw the flaw in this thinking in this situation. It was his belief that the act of refusing to recognize the starcorps as independent States was the long way around to the same end. Kaplan was a pragmatist. He believed that the only thing that was keeping the Earth from out producing the starcorps on a scale of one-thousand to one was their dilapidated industrial infrastructure and their lack of a global economy. But he also knew that Eckhart was no stranger to this thinking and he chose not to belabor what he already knew.

“Yes, you’re right of course,” Kaplan confessed dismissively.

Kaplan’s relationship with Eckhart was one of necessity more than anything else. Wilkinson and Carr had a friendship with Eckhart that was built around a mutual hatred for the starcorps. Kaplan’s position within his ministry was based upon his adept management of the Ministry of Public Works. The importance of this position became exponentially greater at the end of the Global War. And it remained of high importance for the whole of the time that followed. Eckhart had no fondness for Kaplan or his politics. It was his need for his expertise that kept Kaplan in his job.

“That sounds to me like you don’t believe what you’re saying,” Carr pointed out with a studious stare.

“No, I agree,” Kaplan responded quickly. “Nothing is inevitable. But I do believe, one way or another, the Earth will recognize the starcorps as independent States.”

“The starcorps are the property of Earth,” Eckhart heatedly insisted with a glare towards Kaplan. “If we give in to what they want then we give away what is ours.”

Kaplan understood that ownership claims to the starcorps were a nightmare in the making. The simple solution, as he and most other moderates so it, was to concede ownership to the people living within them. But this was an argument that he felt was best kept unsaid for the moment.

“I mean no disrespect, Prime Minister,” Kaplan responded in an apologetic tone. “It’s just that who the starcorps belong to is irrelevant.”

“It is relevant,” Eckhart angrily argued back. “They owe us. We put them there.”

Edward Eckhart was the youngest of three children of Martin and Lisa Eckhart. Edward’s eldest sibling was Benjamin. He was five years Edward’s senior. His sister, Kathryn, was three years his senior. Their father was a Police Officer for the City of Edmonton, Alberta. Edward’s family had a history of working in this profession that went back nearly two-hundred years. At the end of the Third World War, the Eckhart family profession was a resource in high demand by Edmonton. This was due to the sudden influx of refugees. The city’s public services were quickly overwhelmed by their numbers, and the dramatic rise in crime that they brought with them took a heavy toll on the police.

On the day of his birth Edward had nine relatives working for the Edmonton Police Services. By the time he had reached thirteen years of age, three of their number had been killed in the line of duty. His father was the most recent addition to that count. The loss of Martin Eckhart’s income and his clout within the city had a devastating effect on the family’s fortunes. The most immediate demonstration of this was the loss of their home. The city requisitioned it for allocation to a high-value city resident. This was a designation that the Eckharts no longer had. Edward and his family were relocated to a small apartment in a far less desirable sector of the city.

At this time in Edward Eckhart’s life, the city of Edmonton was halfway through a recent political upheaval. Ex-Police Chief Terrence Hirsch had recently wrestled control of the city away from its former Mayor. In place of the Republic, he set up a military dictatorship that was separate from the State of Alberta. In response to this, the starcorps suspended all aid to Edmonton. Deaths due to illness and malnutrition went up tenfold over an eight-year period. Three years after his father’s death Lisa Eckhart became ill and died. Edward assigned most of the blame for his mother’s passing to the Spacers. His hatred for the starcorps could be traced back to this event, but his militant nature towards them began three years after that.

Edward’s brother, Benjamin, joined the Edmonton Police Services two years after the death of his father. Embittered towards the refugees, which he blamed for the misfortunes in his life, he became an avid supporter of Hirsch’s hardline dictatorship. He soon became recognized as a trusted lieutenant within the regime. Before the end of his fourth year as an Edmonton Police Officer, Benjamin, Hirsch and eight others, were killed in a bombardment by a starcorp space-plane. In Edward’s mind, this was a death that the starcorps owned completely.

“Alienating the starcorps does nothing to help the Alberta Alliance,” Kaplan argued back with a flash of anger.

“I’ll alienate the starcorps if I damn well please,” Eckhart shouted back.

Shocked by the intensity of Eckhart’s retort, Kaplan paused before giving his response in a soft voice.

“Then maybe you should think about your Ministry.”

“And what does that mean?” A confused Wilkinson questioned after a two-second delay from Eckhart.

“It means,” Kaplan began with a look of incredulity and with his hands raised up off his lap. “If we don’t do something to improve the plight of the voters we’re going to lose in the next election. Gellenbeck is already calling you a mad man that is sacrificing the state to pander to your hatred for the starcorps.”

Kaplan gave Eckhart and Wilkinson a few seconds to ponder this. He could tell from Eckhart’s sour demeanor that he had already given thought to this. He suspected that Wilkinson was waiting for Eckhart to deny this. At the end of this time, Kaplan added to his statement a request he hoped would give added weight to his argument.

“If you don’t believe me ask Carr.”

Peter Carr was quiet and noncommittal through the whole of this debate. His dislike for the starcorps did not blind him to the realities of this situation. But he was reluctant to say anything that was supportive of Kaplan’s position. This sudden deference to his opinion forced him into the discussion. After the passage of a couple of seconds, he began his assessment of Eckhart’s political situation with an inflection of reluctance.

“The starcorps have made cutbacks in their aid to us. If this continues through to the next election, we could be looking at a much more difficult race than the one we just came out of.”

“We’ll do without,” Eckhart grumbled out.

“I thought we were going to build a coalition of trading partners?” Wilkinson questioned with a surprised expression.

“That’s been slow going,” Carr reported reluctantly.

This was information that Eckhart was fully aware of. Creating a coalition of trading partners was a major campaign promise of his. It was also something that he had given great importance to. He had hopes of building a coalition of partners that would be a force the starcorps had to reckon with. Eckhart had been keeping close tabs on Carr’s efforts at bringing this project to fruition. What he and Carr had learned since beginning this endeavor was that brokering a deal between the divided States of Earth was extremely difficult. The primary holdups to this project were the entrenched rivalries and biases the States had for each other and the more than one-hundred territorial disputes between the States they conversed with.

“How slow?” Wilkinson asked with a curious inflection.

“Slow? It’s nonexistent,” Kaplan declared with feigned shock.

“It’s going to take time,” Eckhart corrected unconvincingly as he looked away from his ministers.

All of Eckhart’s plans for the Alberta Alliance were based around his forming a league of militantly anti-starcorp states. His goal for this coalition was to forge them into an industrial power that stretched far out into the solar system. Ultimately, in his private thoughts, he saw this coalition seizing most, if not all, of the starcorp assets. This, in Eckhart’s mind, was not an unrealistic dream. He felt this way even though nearly all other politicians around the globe believed that a true trading block of ten or more States was a century away. Eckhart’s contrary belief was rooted in his Svengali-like control over masses of embittered and impoverished voters. His influence extended around the globe with varying degrees of effectiveness. Depending upon the State in question, his support for a politician could lift him or her into a powerful government office. At this time, there were half dozen politicians outside of the borders of the Alberta Alliance that were just so indebted to him. At the height of Eckhart’s climb to the position of Prime Minister of the Alberta Alliance he was drunk with power. However, the last couple of years were having a gradually sobering effect on him.

“Prime Minister,” Kaplan gushed with earnest enthusiasm, “that kind of time is something you don’t have. You need to chart a new course. The starcorps now know that they can’t push through an investment treaty without your approval. You have the clout. You can make the deal. The starcorps will pay dearly for you backing.”

Eckhart looked to be pondering Kaplan’s suggestion as he scrunched his face into a frown and glared at the top of his desk. After several seconds of this, he looked up at Kaplan and gave him his response in the most succinct intonation that he could manage.

“We will do business with the starcorps when hell freezes over.”


	6. Habitat Sweet Habitat

“Good morning,” Daniel Beck announced as he strolled into the kitchen.

Six months had passed since the Beck family’s arrival aboard the Starship Amundsen. Daniel Beck was fully dressed and groomed to start his work day. His attire had an almost sporty appearance to it. His footwear was white and similar in appearance to tennis shoes. His clothing was a matching two piece pants and jacket ensemble, tan with a black stripe down the sides. The material looked to be light and comfortable. The length of his jacket went down to the length of his arms and was utilitarian in appearance. It had no lapels, and it zipped all the way up to the base of his neck. His com-link bracelet was wrapped around his left wrist. Wendy was similarly dressed with the exception of the color scheme. Her ensemble was light blue and with a white strip down the side.

“Good morning,” Wendy responded after a quick glance towards her husband. 

Wendy was seated at the family’s kitchen island. Daniel noted when he walked into the room that all her attention was divided between the cereal bowl in front of her and the tablet next to it. He gave no thought to this as he crossed the room. He was accustomed to seeing his wife assimilating new information concerning her profession, and he knew better than to inquire about what that was. This would almost certainly be about something he had little understanding of and even less interest for.

Daniel crossed over to the refrigerator and opened it. With seemingly little thought to the effort, he removed a frozen breakfast platter from the freezer and placed it into the nearby microwave. He then closed the microwave and switched it on with a press of a button. After doing this, he removed a cup from a cabinet and filled it with coffee from an automatic percolator.

“Are the kids gone?” Daniel questioned Wendy before taking a sip of his coffee.

“Adam left a few minutes ago,” Wendy reported without looking up from her tablet. “Daphne and Sawyer have been gone almost two hours now.”

This was news that Daniel was expecting. It was not uncommon of late for him to awaken and find one or more of his family members gone from the home. The family’s daily routines were drastically altered by their move to the Starship Amundsen. This was a change that the children became quickly accustomed to. Daniel was still having a problem acclimating to the infrequent presence of the whole of his family. For him the driving force behind their move to DCT01UTC21480610 was family. His application for residency within a starcorp was motivated solely by his desire to elevate their standard of living and to provide a good upbringing for his children. However, he did not anticipate that this move would change the family dynamic. The absence of the frequent family gatherings, which he enjoyed on Earth, was a discomforting loss for him.

Aside for Daniel’s nostalgia for daily assemblies with the family, all were well settled into their lives here. The children, Daphne, Sawyer, and Adam were assigned schedules for their continuing education on the day after their arrival. One week in with their new school they were spoiled for any other place. There were many reasons for this. All of them came down to the fact that all the schools on Earth were deplorable by comparison. Unlike most Earth schools, the classrooms aboard the Amundsen were not crowded. There were never more than ten students to a room. The school was clean, nearly to the point of sterile, and lunches were free. The added attention from their teachers, the cutting-edge technology within the classrooms, and the safe environment gave the children and their parents peace of mind. For the Beck children, the Amundsen was a happy place to be.

There was only one school on the Amundsen, and it had no special designation other than the Education Center. The student population of the center had an age range from three years to infinity. The configuration of the complex looked similar in appearance to any other sector of the Starship. The layout of the ship and the need to employ space judiciously hindered ideas of unique architectural designs. A small segment of the ship was assigned for educational purposes, and this allotment varied in size as the need changed from season to season.

In basic design, the Amundsen was no different to any other Starship. The primary living and communal areas were on the top level of the ring. The ceiling for this level was one-hundred feet above the floor and crammed with light fixtures that spanned the ring. The lights dimmed and brightened to simulate the passage of the days. Below the lighting was a five-hundred-yard-wide indoor park with a walkway that ran through the entire twelve-mile circumference of this level. The park was commonly called the promenade. At intermittent locations, four large structures, the auditorium, the shopping center, an office complex and a stadium were built into the center of the park, from floor to ceiling. The overhead lighting was built around them, on either side. Smaller structures, like restaurants, a public swimming pool, tennis courts, basketball courts, and an ice rink were in the park at various locations. On either side of this park, along the outer walls, were the living quarters for all thirteen-thousand of the Amundsen’s occupants. To the eye, they looked like units inside of multiple, eight stories high, apartment complexes, situated side by side. In reality, it was a single structure that went all the way around the ring. Elevators and stairwells, affixed to the front of the structure, in fifty-yard increments, were accessible from the external walkways along each floor of the complex. The back sides of each apartment complex were built into the sidewall of the ring. Behind the wall were multi-level alleyways. These were used for utilitarian access to these compartments. Garbage, sewage, power lines, plumbing and environmental systems were all processed and/or maintained and/or monitored from there. The alleyways also provided rear exits for all compartments built into the sides of the habitat ring.

There were five levels beneath the top-level ring. Each of these had fifteen feet high ceilings. They were referred to as the basement levels and it was employed for multiple uses. First among of these, it was used as the primary artery and parking garage for the transportation pods. Other uses for these basement levels included locations for places like machine shops, warehouses, and maintenance closets. The water treatment plant and the recycling centers were located here as well. The industrial zone of the starship was the basement levels.

The Amundsen was not the only starship that Starcorp DCT01 had. However, it was the only one designated as just a starship. The starship designation by its self was given to city size habitat ships that were primarily used as a residence for humans. Other habitat vessels of similar size, within the DCT01 cluster, were classified as factory starships, agriculture starships and construction starships.

Nothing propelled human colonization of space better than the starships. They were the homes and work spaces of off-world humans. The manufacture of these mammoth vessels became surprisingly simple shortly after the end of the third world war. The sudden and drastic need for living space supplied the motivation to try a new method that was, until then, theoretical. It was called casting.

The costs associated with building parts of a ship on Earth, or on some other planetary surface, and transporting them into space was astronomical. Manufacturing small sections in space and piecing them together was both costly and time exorbitant. The new process involved gathering together large amounts of a prerequisite mineral in open space and then capturing, focusing and directing rays of the sun onto them. When the minerals melted together into a free floating molten globule, it was spun. The centrifugal effect shaped the mass into a hollow disk. After it cooled, it was cut into large sections, transported to a construction site and reassembled around the interior wheel and framework for the habitat. This method of manufacture was used for the hull and the interior wheel of the starship. All other aspects of a starship were constructed in a factory and assembled within the hull and the interior wheel.

Casting drastically reduced the cost of constructing large habitats in space. It also reduced the timeframe to a fraction of one percent for a spaceship of this size. This evolution in manufacturing and construction made the migration of large numbers of people into space possible. To accommodate the demand for living space, bigger and better starships came into existence every six months. The convention that gave birth of the starcorps occurred aboard a starship.

The Starship Amundsen provided housing for all of the DCT01’s employees in its cluster. Most that worked here had to travel off the Amundsen to get to their jobs aboard one of these other star class spaceships. This was true for both Wendy and Daniel. Their jobs required them to report to the Agriculture and Factory Starships, respectively. This was a chore that Daniel performed dutifully. He had no great love for his work, but he was proud of the skill level he had attained in his chosen profession. Wendy, however, was very much the opposite in this. She set off for work eagerly each day, and she was late returning home nearly every night. She loved her job. More importantly, she loved her profession.

Wendy felt no rush to hurry home to her family. Her six months in space allowed her to acclimate to life here in more ways than one. She felt secure in the thinking that her children were safe. Crime was virtually nonexistent. Transportation and communication were readily available throughout the cluster. Food was accessible from anyplace where it was being dispensed without upfront payments. And there were no hazardous weather conditions to be concerned about. Wendy needed only to access the Amundsen’s computer to learn where her family members were, and what condition they were in. However, this was something that she rarely did. Often, Wendy was too preoccupied with her work.

The apartment that the Becks lived in was on the fourth and fifth floors up from the top-level ring. A guest bathroom, the family room, kitchen and dining room was situated below four bedrooms and two bathrooms. On the lower level, the front door opened in from the six-foot wide communal walkway. The family and dining rooms had ceiling to floor glass walls with views of the walkway and the promenade beyond that. The bedrooms on the upper floor had ceiling to floor glass sliding doors that provided access to small personal patios. The promenade was also visible from the patio. Wood, drywall, and plaster were nowhere to be found in the structural makeup of the apartment or the starship as a whole. In their places were aluminum, glass, fiberglass, and plastic. The apartment was spacious and clean. The latter was the result of the ship’s cleaning service that attended to all the occupied residences aboard the Amundsen at regular intervals. The apartment was comfortably furnished and decorated to suit the taste of its occupants. By comparison to what the Beck family was accustomed to this was perfection.

“Are you taking in a seminar this evening?” Daniel questioned as he set his newly heated, precooked, breakfast platter on the kitchen island top.

A second behind the asking of this question Daniel sat in the chair situated at a right angle to Wendy.

The children were not the only ones taking classes. Wendy and Daniel were taking courses related to their respective professions. This they did part-time, and it was a major factor in the family disconnect for much of the time. These regularly scheduled periods of separation were times that Daniel had committed to memory. The occasional seminar was usually an event that came up on short notice.

Daniel’s question was a distraction for Wendy. It intruded into her concentration on the subject matter that she was reading. Because of this, it took her a second to focus her thoughts on the correct answer.

“No,” Wendy replied to Daniel’s query with a confused expression. “I should be home at the usual time.”

Daniel accepted this answer as though it was expected. He was accustomed to Wendy giving him notice in advance of an upcoming seminar whenever possible. His only reason for asking was her preoccupation with what she was reading. This was usually a sign that she was cramming something new into her head. This only occurred when a seminar on a new process, procedure, or discovery suddenly popped up. When it came to Wendy’s scheduled curriculum, she was always ahead of the class timetable.

“So, what’s the story with the tablet?” Daniel questioned, reluctantly, just before inserting a fork load of in vitro grown sausage and eggs into his mouth.

This question brought Daniel into Wendy’s sphere of concentration. She, suddenly, had someone to share her thinking with and this she did without hesitation.

“There’s an editorial here by Terry Lambert,” Wendy reported with a look of intrigue. “He says that Earth and the starcorps are on a trajectory for war.”

Daniel was not fazed by this report. He had a long practice of entertaining discussions with friends and co-workers about the future of Earth and the starcorps. The opinion of one editorialist carried no weight with him, but this was not true for Wendy. She seldom took any interest in politics or discussions on politics. If her immediate environment was reasonably comfortable and secure, she gave little thought to the political winds beyond. What caused this editorial to be of so much interest to her was the suggestion of war. There had been no talk of a major military action since the end of the World War III. The primary reason behind this was the perception that the Earthers were incapable of projecting any kind of military action beyond a border war. The absence of this kind of rhetoric gave Wendy cause to fill at ease with her residency within a starcorp. She knew only too well the extent of most Earthers contempt for Spacers. For most of her life she partook in this enmity towards Spacers but to a far lesser degree. So long as this was just idle talk by the Earthers she was content with her decision to become a Spacer. The benefits that the starcorp provided for her children outweighed the cultural prejudice that was instilled in her from birth.

“He’s just overreacting,” Daniel dismissed cavalierly just before inserting another fork full of food into his mouth.

Wendy was not reassured by this comment and quickly countered it with a look that was near to desperation.

“He says that in less than a decade all or a large portion of Earth’s governments could combine to become the dominant power in the solar system.”

“That won’t happen for another century,” Daniel rebuffed without disrupting his feeding.

“They’re doing it right now,” Wendy argued back an instant behind. “They’re trying to put together a seventeen-state union.”

Daniel assigned no importance to the hysterical tinge in Wendy’s speech. He chewed his food and took a sip of his coffee at his leisure before voicing his opinion on the subject.

“They’re just talking, Honey,” Daniel promised in a comforting tone. “The states have been grumbling about investment treaties—trade agreements—alliances, for the past half century. It always falls through. Earth is a mess. Nothing is going to happen down there until they set aside their hostilities towards each other, and that’s not happening anytime soon.”

Wendy took some solace from Daniel’s confidence in his position, but it did not set aside her concerns completely. She took a moment to weigh one against the other and then vocalized her final thought on the matter.

“We didn’t bring the kids up here to become targets in a shooting gallery,” Wendy softly asserted with and a shake of her head.

“It’s never going to happen,” Daniel softly countered with a partial smile. “I promise. Earth is a century away from reconstituting its industrial might.”


	7. Titan Rising

From the moment that he accepted the commission offered to him by the Starcorp League Joshua Sloan had been anxiously waiting for this day. He perceived this moment as the start date for the actual construction of his war machine. All that he had done before this was design its physical appearance and dimensions. This felt more like play than work to him. His imagination could run free with ideas. In his mind, this was preparatory to the actual work of constructing it. He knew that the workforce and budget that he was about to bring to bear was monstrous by comparison to all that he had done so far.

Despite this comparatively minuscule opening process, the design phase took up all the available time that led up to this day. Even with six months to work with he was rushed to complete an overall blueprint for all the component vessels to his war machine. To affect this, he was given fifty engineers. They were all highly qualified and highly rated professionals from all sectors of the starcorp community. They were all specialist in robotics, primarily the large construction robots, and the construction ships that housed and maintained them.

Construction starships and construction robots were the vessels and machines that built the starcorps. Construction robots were the Spacers version of a construction crane on earth. Massive in size, the construction robots were the asteroid wranglers that collected and mined the planetoids for its mineral wealth. They were the construction workers that assembled the starships and spaceships of the starcorps. Construction robots were the mainstay of the starcorps. The continued growth of the starcorps was dependent upon their existence. The manufacture and selling of construction robots was a major industry within the starcorps. More than three-thousand construction robots were in service about the solar system. Their function and design grew, evolved and expanded with the starcorps. Many of the top design engineers responsible for their development were assigned to Joshua’s team. They were responsible for more than three-hundred design suggestions offered to Joshua regarding the look and size of his war machine. Together, they assessed and modified these designs until Joshua settled on the final blueprints. This decision he made less than two days earlier. Joshua spent the time after this formulating the command structure for the next phase of the project.

For much of the past six months, Joshua and his collection of design engineers had been falling through space towards the planet Saturn. Their final destination was to be Saturn VI, Titan, the largest moon about the planet. The Starcorp League picked this location as the site for the construction of Joshua’s war machine. A fictitious starcorp was devised as a front for this project. They felt that Saturn and its moons were sufficiently distant enough to keep this, massive and top-secret construction project hidden from, nearly, all the other inhabitants of the solar system, for the short term. There were seven minor exploration and research endeavors taking place around Saturn and its moons. But they were minuscule in scale and governed by distant starcorps that were part owners in Joshua’s project. The League was confident that they could keep them in the dark, for the most part, for the next few years.

The starship that was carrying Joshua to his construction site was called the Dominion. It was a newly built vessel that was originally intended to go elsewhere. The Starcorp League secured it under the pretense that the purchase order was sold to a new starcorp. The League assigned this fake starcorp the ticker symbol RG01UTC21820317. The maximum occupancy of the Dominion was twenty-five thousand people. At this moment, there were only two-hundred-eighty-six people aboard the vessel. There was no need for any more than this number, for the present. The ship’s crew, the habitat maintenance personnel made up the bulk of this number. Joshua’s design and engineering team, and their families made up the difference.

The Starship Dominion was expected to be the first of several large purchases on behalf of this fake starcorp. Factory ships and Construction ships were already being targeted up for the assembly process of this project. The varied super segments of Joshua’s war machine were to be manufactured by starcorps all about the solar system. Each piece was to be ferried to Titan by dedicated space haulers. After arrival, these super segments would be assembled together by large construction robots. Their primary function would be the fastening together of the hulls and the habitat chambers. Smaller robots would take on the task of assembling large mechanical portions and the overall infrastructure. The smallest robots would be used to assemble the human spaces within the habitat ring, along with their associated plumbing and wiring. Each of these robots would be manned by at least one operator. It was estimated that a workforce more than five thousand would be needed to complete the project within the allotted time frame. The cost of all of this was to be secretly covered by all the starcorps. This concealment of expenditures and resources by the starcorps was considered the weakest link in this top-secret program.

The Dominion was four hours away from commencing deceleration into Saturn’s gravitational sphere. The Captain of the starship also planned to use this event to steer the Dominion into a high orbit around Titan, one of the gas giant’s sixty-three moons. This act of decelerating to a virtual stop was expected to last for five hours. For the whole of this time, the passengers and crew would be secured inside space capsules located, in a cluster, atop of the starship’s hub. Joshua elected to use the time before this event to lay out the organizational structure of this program’s next phase and to assign the heads of its separate divisions.

Joshua’s team of engineers strolled, one after the other, into a large plain room in the starship’s office complex. It took less than five minutes for all fifty to assemble. In appearance, the room looked like a classroom. A large, white, marker board was situated along the front wall. The space inside was large enough to accommodate twenty engineering workstations. Half of the fifty engineers found seats somewhere inside. The others crowded about along the side walls. Joshua was the last to arrive, two minutes behind the group. Gripped in his left hand was a computer tablet. A rather pretty-looking young man followed him into the room, one step behind and to the left. All discussions and whispering between the assembled engineers came to a stop the moment they walked through the door.

“Thank you all for coming on such short notice,” Joshua began as he hurried into the room.

Joshua stopped at the head of the room shortly after entering. His companion took a position to his left. Joshua scanned the faces in front of him and was quickly satisfied that all were present.

“I believe you’re all familiar with Nathan Holt,” Joshua began with a hand gesture towards the person to his immediate left. “I’ve selected him for the position of Director of Human Resources. I asked him to be here so that you all can attach a face to the title that some of you will be communicating with regularly.”

Nathan Holt was small in stature and build, flawlessly groomed and decidedly young in appearance. This was an image that he put great effort into maintaining. His polished manner and ease at conversing with others were matched only by his intellect. He was what some had termed sharp as a tack. Upon his introduction, he gave a slight bow to the assembly before him. There was no reciprocation other than a few nods of comprehension. All present had seen Nathan before, but only a few had ever spoken to him. And these conversations were all limited to passing salutations. There was no animosity behind their non-response. The engineers saw this introduction as a perfunctory formality ahead of the main event. They filed Nathan’s name and face away in their memory and waited on Joshua to continue with his address. This he did three seconds later.

“The first thing I want to say is thanks to all of you for the work that you’ve done so far. I know that many of you have been separated from family and friends by this project. And I know I’ve pushed you hard over the past six months, but you have risen to the challenge. We’ve accomplished a lot in a short amount of time. I am convinced that we have the concept designs we need to turn these models into full-scale, fully functional, machines. So, I want you all of you to know that I appreciate the hard work and dedication that you’ve given to this project.”

“So much for the easy part,” Joshua continued after a brief pause to inhale and exhale. “As you all know; we will begin deceleration within the next four hours. As soon as we’re parked in orbit around Titan we will begin the second phase. A lot will be happening now, and it will be coming at us very fast. I can tell you that there are seven transport ships in route to us as I speak. On them, there are an additional three hundred engineers, scientists, and technicians. Three of them are expected to arrive within the next two-hundred hours. And this is just the first wave of a large workforce that will be assembling here over the next several years. When they arrive, I need us to be ready to put them to work. You all know what we’re doing here. We don’t know how much time that we have. It could be a lot, or it could be very little. So, I want us to treat time is if it’s running out fast. We need to keep pushing for solutions today. We don’t have the time to put it off until tomorrow. I’ve seen what you can do, and I have every confidence that you will rise to the challenge once again.”

Joshua took a moment after this to peruse the faces staring back at him. After five seconds of this, he began to speak on the primary subject behind this meeting.

“Okay then, let’s get started.”

Joshua panned the room full of faces with a hint of a smile. A few seconds later he began to speak again.

“Dan,” Joshua called out with a look towards Dan Goodrich, “I’m assigning you the job of heading up the development of all support vehicles other than the space-planes.”

Dan was a moderately handsome white male with sandy hair. He stood five-foot-eleven and sported an average build. His default demeanor was always pleasant friendly. His response to Joshua’s delegation was to render a smile and a nod.

“Hung,” Joshua continued with a look to Jeffery Hung, “you will head up development of the basestar.”

Jeffery was a six-foot tall Asian male. His other features were in keeping with his ethnicity, with an exception for his speech. His first language was English. He responded to Joshua’s delegation with an authoritative nod of his head and an equally decisive reply.

“Looking forward to it…”

Linda,” Joshua called out a second behind with a look at Linda Clark, “I’m picking you to head up development of space-planes.”

Linda was a five-foot-six sandy-haired blond. There was nothing about her facial features to prompt most people to think her attractive. This perception was helped by the fact that she did not put much effort into her appearance. Most people to meet her thought her to be gay, and those acquainted with her knew this to be right. This was a fact she made no attempt to hide. She responded to Joshua’s delegation with a slightly mumbled “okay” while appearing to be pondering the patterns on the floor.

“I will be heading up the development of Mows,” Joshua continued a second behind Linda’s response. He gave all a quick glance with a pan from left to right and back again. He then continued with his delegating two seconds later.

“Chris,” Joshua began again with a look towards Christopher Hodges. “I want you on my team. I would like you to head up the hull systems divisions for the Mows.”

Chris was a large, barrel-chested man that stood all of six-foot-three in height. Gruff in his manner, it was not in his nature to hold back on his opinion about anything. Joshua waited for an acceptance, which he was slow in given. Three seconds passed before he made eye contact with Joshua and nodded his head in the affirmative.

“Lowell,” Joshua spoke with a look at Lowell Kane. “I would like you to head up the guidance and control systems software division for me.”

A thin man, nearly to the appearance of being gaunt, Lowell was the most energized person in the room. His actions were invariably quick, as was his thinking and his speaking. He often lost patience with those that had trouble keeping up with him. Among his intellectual equals, that had problems following his train of thought, this feeling impatience was often reciprocated.

“You’ve got me,” Lowell sharply accepted with a nod of his head.

Joshua responded to this reply with a smile and a nod before turning his attention to Harold Reyes. He could only see his head as he peered over the shoulders of others standing in front of him.

“Harry, I need you run the mechanical systems division.”

Harold Reyes stepped to the forward from the rear of the group. Standing six-foot-two in height, Harry was a tall, moderately muscular and a decidedly handsome man. His only feature to suggest his Hispanic heritage was his dark hair. After brushing his way past four people, he stopped three feet out in front of the others and gave his reply in a resounding voice.

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Joshua reacted to this answer with a large smile. After a few seconds, he turned his attention towards Keith Mallory.

“Keith, I need you for the power and propulsion systems division.”

Despite his five-foot-eight stature, Keith was formidable in appearance. Moderately husky and ruggedly handsome, he maintained a near constant stern expression. At the sound of his name being spoken, he gave Joshua a decisive expression and responded to his request an instant behind.

“I can do that boss.”

Joshua gave a smile that bordered on a grin in reaction to this acceptance. Two seconds later, still holding his smile, he turned his attention towards Mark Fleischman.

“Mark, I need you to run the weapons development division.”

Mark was six-feet tall and slim of build. From a distance, most would think him athletically inclined, but his conversation quickly dispelled that notion. His genius level intellect was clearly marked whenever he spoke and the subjects that most intrigued him. Sports were never one of these.

“Okay,” Mark replied with a faint smile and a nod.

Still smiling, Joshua reacted to this with a nod of approval for his response. A second later he began to look about the room. He scanned back and forth and back again before settling his attention on Eric Pettorino seated at the front to his left.

“Eric,” Joshua addressed with the residue of his smile still on his face. “I need you take care of the human systems division for me.”

Eric was a marginally rotund man of little stature, five-feet-six to be exact. His demeanor was often pleasant. And when it was not, he was likely entertaining others with a display of high spirits. After hearing Joshua’s request of him, he flashed a broad smile and gave a quick nod of acceptance.

Joshua gave back a quick nod of approval and then he looked to Barbara Kurtz. She was standing in an erect posture straight away from him with her arms folded in front of her. Tall and slender, with dark shoulder length hair, she exuded confidence and professionalism.

“Barbara, I would like you to manage project integration.”

Barbara gave a slight nod of acceptance without any emotional expression. Joshua accepted this with a soft smile and a nod. Two seconds after this he addressed the group.

“Are there any questions or concerns about these assignments?”

Joshua took five seconds to examine the room after presenting this query. There was no response.

“Or anything, in general,” Joshua appended to his original query.

Again, there was no response. After a few seconds had passed, Joshua added a final remark with an authoritative tone to his voice.

“Okay then, I will expect project heads to have their assignment of division leaders turned into Nathan within the next forty hours—People, I want us to hit the ground running here. We need to treat this as if time is about to run out because that might very well be the case.”

After this Joshua dismissed the group to prepare for deceleration into the Saturn System. The assembly shortly disbursed. Two hours later they and all others aboard the Dominion were secured into escape pods within their assigned space capsules. The Captain of the Dominion began decelerating the massive starship an hour later.

Saturn gleamed with the reflected light of the nearest star, Sol. From the perspective of the Dominion, Saturn looked like a multi-hued marble, suspended in space at arm’s length away. In the opposite direction, Sol looked like a glowing light bulb situated one hundred yards distant in a pitch-black room.

The enormous disk-shaped starship appeared as though it was motionless. In reality, the starship was falling towards the Saturn System at close to one percent of the speed of light. At the command of the Captain, the Dominion began to slowly rotate about. A couple of minutes later, its backside was turned forward. A few seconds after the end of this transition the primary thruster ignited. At the center of the backside of the starship, a glow of white emanated out the large opening and disbursed into the black of space. There was no visible change in starship’s disposition, but this appearance did not reflect the reality. The starship’s computer was reporting a steady falloff of forward momentum. It also reported a sharp increase in power consumption by the Zero G Generator. This was understood by the crew as a normal act to compensate for the inertia produced by deceleration.

The Dominion’s primary thruster blazed for ninety minutes before shutting down. By the end of this time, Saturn loomed before it, blotting out a view of the vast empty space behind. The rings of the gas giant were clearly visible on its monitors. The Dominion continued to fall into the system for another two hours with its engines off, its course slightly askew of Saturn. Halfway through this time, a speck appeared on the monitors in the path of the starship. Several minutes later, the speck looked to be a moon. The massive starship ignited its primary thruster once again and maintained its burn for an additional twenty-six minutes. The strength of its burn incrementally descended over the course of this time and the tiny moon ahead grew before it at a perceptible pace. When the primary thruster shut down altogether, large features of the moon were visible to the unaided eye. The bulk of Saturn was blocked from Dominion’s view by the moon that was situated between it and them. The attitude thruster of the starship began to negotiate its final maneuvers. After another five minutes, these thrusters discontinued their minuscule adjustments, and the Dominion settled into its parking orbit about Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.


	8. A New Venue

“Hi,” Daphne loudly greeted with a large smile.

“Hi,” Leann returned with equal volume and enthusiasm.

The two girls closed the eight steps between them with outstretched arms and grins on their faces. A second later, they clasped hands and escalated their grins into giggles as they examined each other’s attire.

“I like what you’re wearing,” Daphne reported with a broad smile.

“Thanks,” Leann responded excitedly. “Your suit is so cute on you,” she reciprocated an instant behind.

They examined each other for two seconds more and then turned their attentions to all that was going on around them.

“Wow! This looks great,” Daphne acknowledged in a soft voice. “I wasn’t expecting all of this.”

This proximity to each other made it easier for them to hear over the music that filled the air around them.

“I know,” Leann exclaimed back. “Isn’t it great?”

“Yeah,” Daphne concurred as she looked about her with an elated expression.

After a brief hesitation, Daphne looked back upon the face of Leann with an expression of excitement and put to her a question that had just popped into her mind.

“How long have you been here?”

“I just got here a few minutes ago,” Leann responded without hesitation.

Both girls were of the same thinking with regards to this event. An explanation for the question and the answer to it was not needed between them. They both were eager to know who had come and who had not.

“I didn’t think that there would be this many people here,” Daphne exclaimed with wonder in her voice. “Most of the people here look like adults.”

“So are we,” Leann exclaimed sharply and with a mocking scowl. “Get used to it, Babe, we’re not little girls anymore.”

Both Daphne and Leann openly laughed at this. When they exhausted their mirth, a few seconds later, Leann hooked her arm around Daphne’s and gave her a leading tug supported by a spoken summons.

“Come on, let’s see what we can get into.”

The Sector Seven public pool was one of three within the Amundsen Starship. Each of the three had their own characteristic design. The pool in this sector was the least popular of the three. This was due to its size and the amenities associated with it. The other two were larger, and one of the two had a large waterslide attached to it and a small theme park built around it. The Sector Seven Public Pool had none of these amenities and was configured to accommodate smaller crowds, two-hundred people at the most. It was also enclosed in a translucent dome. This is what made it perfect for the gathering that was present here this day.

Daphne and Leann had just recently graduated out of DCT01UTC21480610’s Compulsory Education Division (CED) and were at present new students within its Vocational Education Division (VED). The event they were attending was a pool party that was orchestrated by a handful of students within the VED’s School of Science. These social affairs were common and popular occurrences aboard the starship. The only limitation that prevented them from being daily occurrences was the expense of renting the venue. To secure this site, and the amenities within, tickets were sold exclusively to School of Science students. This had the added advantage of limiting access to a select group of people.

Life aboard the Amundsen was, for the most part, easy and carefree. The park that dominated the open space on the top floor of the ring was generally available to all. This included physical fitness gyms, clubhouses, sports facilities, spas, and salons. Most its occupants frolicked in its resort-like ambiance. Because of this open access, private affairs had to be secured in advance. These events were nearly always inaccessible to adolescents. That is what made this event all the more exciting for Daphne and Leann. It was their first time attending an adult only affair.

Daphne reached eighteen years of age two months earlier. Her Compulsory Education Program came to an end one month before that. By DCT01 law, any further pursuits of academic accolades, if any, was from then on her decision to make. The Starcorp was prepared to pick up the bill for her continuing education as a dependent of her parents until the age of twenty-two with the codicil that she maintains a B average or better. Also, as a full-time student and a resident of her parent’s home, all the taxes concerning her would be waived during this time. The only other option to this deference within the starcorp was for her to vacate the status of a dependent of her parents, enter the labor pool and to start paying taxes. The former was Daphne’s chosen path. Her elected course of study was Physics. This was due to her intrigue with the mechanics of the universe and her strong penchant for mathematics.

As a member of the Science Department, Daphne frequently came across the fliers that advertised this pool party. At first, she gave no thought to attending, despite the encouragement of Leann. Her reluctance was due to her discomfort with mingling among people she did not know. This discomfort was intensified by the suspicion that all present would likely be mature adults. It was well known to all that adolescence was an extreme minority in space. On average, recent CED graduates represented just short of ten percent of student enrollment into the VED each semester. This numerical disadvantage became startling apparent to Daphne when she examined the mix of students in her classes. Most were well over thirty years of age.

At this time, all the people that Daphne called her friends were eighteen years old or younger and she felt comfortable in their company. The social gatherings of the VED student body felt too much like a place where she did not belong. She regularly fended off Leann’s efforts to recruit her as a companion to one of these affairs. This resistance came to an end one second after Benjamin Romano inquired if she would be there.

Benjamin Romano was a twenty-seven-year-old DCT01 Security Officer. He was, at this time, taking classes towards an Aerospace Engineering Degree, part-time. He stood one-half of an inch above six feet. His hair was dark, short and softly curled. His complexion was naturally tan. His shoulders were broad, and his physique was slim and toned. He was, in Daphne’s eyes, the ideal image of a male, and this appearance of perfection did not end with his looks. She and he shared a Differential Equations class which became the means for their meeting. She perceived his manner as charming and pleasant. And his smile disarmed her intellectually whenever he directed it her way.

Daphne had very little experience with the mating process. Before going up to the Amundsen, her predisposition for achieving academic excellence, her age and her mildly shy nature did little to generate opportunities for romantic encounters. After her relocation to space, the opportunities became far fewer. This was due to the smaller population of romantic candidates. This notwithstanding, she did have a brief, innocent fling with a young man that was one year her junior. In this, she did not have any serious feelings for the young man. The act was more intriguing than the actor.

Benjamin Romano was Daphne’s first serious crush. Eagerly she went to the class that they both attended as pupils with the hope of seeing him there. Much of her day was spent thinking of him, and her grades suffered for the attention. With each new school day, she meticulously adorned herself to be pleasing to his eyes. All that she said and did in his presence was premeasured to incur his favor. And in this, she was completely successful.

Daphne did not know the extent of Benjamin’s affinity for her. She knew that he liked her, but she persuaded herself that this was no more than how he felt about several others in the class that they attended. However, in this, she was mistaken. In reality, Benjamin Romano had eyes for her and none other. It was only her age and inexperience that gave him cause to question the propriety of pursuing her. He struggled with this thinking for several weeks before deciding to give into his fancy. He had every intention of acting upon it for the first time at some point during this party.

When Benjamin first saw Daphne, she was moving in his general direction. He watched, to the exclusion of all others, as she casually weaved through the throng of people assembled about the pool while looking about for someone she knew. Benjamin took advantage of this time to examine her physique in detail. Standing five-feet-eight-inches tall, Daphne had a light brown complexion. Her hair was shoulder length, black and naturally wavy. Her body was slender and shapely, and her face was unblemished and symmetrically attractive. She wore a two-piece, black and white swimsuit that was striped at the top, solid black at the bottom with a striped tie belt. She wore a sheer, white, hip-length, gauze tunic over the swimsuit. Benjamin was not displeased with any part of what he saw.

Shortly into her stroll about the pool Daphne caught sight of Benjamin looking directly at her. The sight of him alone, unattended by another female, gave her an instant feeling of relief. She smiled at him modestly while praying that he would come to her side. This he did without hesitation.

“Hi,” Benjamin announced as he walked up to her.

Benjamin was attired in blue, white and black patterned swim shorts and nothing else. His physique was muscular and tone, just as Daphne had imagined it.

“Hi,” Daphne gushed back shyly.

“Hi, Benjamin,” Leann spoke with a suggestive singsong inflection. “How are you?”

Leann was aware of Daphne’s preference for Benjamin, and she was confident that there were very few men that would not be attracted to her. The sight of Benjamin walking directly up to Daphne, at first sight, was confirmation of this in her mind.

“Hi, Leann,” Benjamin responded with a turn of his head in her direction.

Benjamin wasted no time after this directing his attention back onto Daphne. Standing a foot away, he locked his eyes onto hers.

“You came,” Benjamin spoke with a questioning inflection and a modest smile.

“Yeah...,” Daphne bashfully answered.

Unnerved by his tightly focused attention onto her face, Daphne searched her thoughts for something more to add to her response. After a slight hesitation, she said the first thing that came to her mind.

“It’s nice.”

“Yes, it is,” Benjamin agreed with a smile and a gentle nod of his head.

Both Benjamin and Daphne paused to exchange smiles and stares. Leann had concluded, ahead of Benjamin’s response, that this was an intimate affair and that had no place within for her. She quickly took advantage of the brief silence to act upon this comprehension.

“You know; I think I’m going to do some mingling. So, I’ll see you… You know… ah… Whenever…”

“Okay,” Daphne quickly agreed with a nod of her head.

Lean strolled away after this with a smile, periodically looking back as she went.

“You want to get something to eat?” Benjamin questioned after a moment of more of staring and smiling.

Daphne agreed to this and followed Benjamin into the pool house. A large buffet table was situated in the reception area. She and Benjamin perused the selection of food and drink while exchanging small talk about what they found there. Through her responses and smiles, Daphne gave him every indication that she enjoyed his company, and Benjamin’s desire to amuse her was well marked by the chosen topics of his banter. After loading their plates and cups with food and drink, they sat out by the pool and continued to enjoy each other’s company. The merriment between them continued for another forty minutes and then their talk became earnest.

“I suppose you already know that I like you—a lot,” Benjamin confessed to Daphne in an almost hushed tone of voice.

“No, not really,” Daphne responded shyly. “I mean I did think that you liked me, but not a lot.”

“Well, I do. I like you a lot,” Benjamin asserted softly. “And I have almost from the first moment I saw you.”

For a moment, Daphne looked away with a blush and a smile after hearing this report. At the end of this, she made her own confession in a meek tone of voice.

“I like you too—a lot.”

Benjamin felt embolden by this response. Up until that moment, he had no idea how Daphne would react to advances from him. His biggest fear was that she would reject him out of hand as being too old for her. He could not stop himself from seeing her as a grown girl rather than a young lady. Benjamin took relief from Daphne’s reciprocation of his regard for her and began vocalizing the remainder of what he had queued to say.

“The reason why I haven’t said anything until now is because I wasn’t sure how appropriate that would be.”

“I’m eighteen,” Daphne promptly defended.

“I know, that’s exactly what’s been making this so difficult for me,” Benjamin explained with a barely amused expression. “If you were seventeen I might have been able to push you out of my thoughts.”

“So, are you saying that my age makes me irresistible?” Daphne questioned with an amused expression.

“Something-like-that,” Benjamin corrected with a soft grin

Daphne displayed a large smile behind a blush in reaction to this confession.

“I’m telling you this because I didn’t want you to think that I had been leading you on.”

“Okay,” Daphne responded hesitantly and with a confused expression.

“I just want you to know that if I weren't leaving the Amundsen, I would be asking you out right now.”

“Leaving?” Daphne questioned with a startled inflection. “Where are you going?”

“They’re sending me to RG01,” Benjamin explained with a slightly confused expression. “I thought you knew.”

“What do you mean sending you?” Daphne questioned quickly and with indifference to his latter remark.

“D-C-T has loaned me out,” Benjamin explained in a flat voice.

“But you’re coming back?” Daphne questioned in a tone laced with concern.

“That could be two—three—years from now. RG01 has been renting its workforce off other Starcorps for almost two years now. It’s really strange,” Benjamin pondered out loud. “A lot of people are beginning to wonder what they’re doing out there.”

Daphne did not share Benjamin’s intrigue with the goings on of RG01. Her only interest, at that moment, was for Benjamin’s immediate future.

“Yes, but don’t you have a choice in this?” Daphne questioned with the hope that there was still time for him to back out of this move.

“I can opt out,” Benjamin explained with a slight shake of his head. “But if I do I’ll lose my position. They’ll just hire someone else into my job and send that person in my stead.”

“How can they do that?” Daphne questioned with no small inflection of surprise. “They can’t just kick you out of your job simply because you don’t want to leave.”

“It seems they can,” Benjamin retorted with a huff and a half smile. “The Directors slipped a bill through the legislature that gives them that right. It’s got more than a few people very upset.”

Daphne had never in the past been interested in the business maneuverings of the corporate heads, or Starcorp laws and politics. These subjects bored her, normally. If she had been interested in them then she would have certainly taken note of the public political wrangling that had been going on for the past two years about this practice. It was only because of her interest in Benjamin that her curiosity was piqued at this moment.

“What happens if you opt out?” Daphne quickly questioned back.

“I lose my seniority,” Benjamin returned woefully. “And I go back into the employee pool.”

Daphne instantly comprehended how significant this setback would be for him. At that moment, she could think of nothing else she needed to hear to clarify his decision to go. She hesitated to ponder what more she could say before asking the one question that she most needed an answer to.

“When are you going?”

“Tomorrow.”

Daphne and Benjamin spent the remainder of that afternoon in each other’s company, and most of that night in each other’s arms. For Daphne, this was her first true affair. When the evening was over, she could not imagine going through the next two years separated from Benjamin Romano. She left him with the promise to see him off the next day. Daphne entered her home when the habitat ring’s dome light was at its lowest intensity and all members of her family were asleep in their beds.

The next morning, Daphne got up from her bed and set off to spend the morning with Benjamin. By midafternoon, she had made her tearful goodbyes and Benjamin was into the first leg of his journey to the Saturn system. Daphne spent the remainder of the afternoon, somberly, confiding her fears and sorrows to Leann. By early evening, she was back in her home trying to act as if nothing had happened. In this, she was successful with Sawyer and Adam. However, Wendy took note of her depressed state of mind and inquired about it on two occasions. Daphne brushed off both inquiries with nonchalant dismissals and then walked away to sulk in her room.

Daphne had no interest in interacting with her family this evening. Her depression was too great for their playful banter, and her appetite for food was nonexistent. She chose to remain closed away behind her bedroom door while they conversed, played and ate. This remained her state of being right up until the time that her father made his appearance early that night.

“I need everyone in the living-room,” Daniel loudly announced after entering the apartment.

Daphne heard her father’s call and the rap on her door as he went by. She hesitated to rise from her bed and did so reluctantly. She could not imagine what news her father had to impart to the family. This call for the family to gather about him was not a common occurrence. In the past, family announcements were given when all were at the breakfast table, or passed on to each member of the family in turn. The fact that her father was going the extra step of commanding them all to assemble gave her reason to be intrigued, slightly.

“Into the living-room, into the living-room,” Daniel encouraged an instant after Daphne opened her door. “I have something I have to tell you.”

“What is it, Dad,” Adam queried impatiently after bounding out of his room.

“I’ll tell you in the living-room,” Daniel instructed as he directed his son down the hall.

Adam responded to this by hurrying down the hall in the direction of the stairs. Sawyer followed behind him in with less visible display of eagerness. Daniel turned about and followed his sons after noting Daphne’s presence in her doorway.

“Daphne, come on,” Daniel called behind after turning into the stairwell.

Daphne listlessly moved towards the stairwell and the living-room on the floor below. Her depression continued to prevent her from displaying any kind of excitement for this family meeting. She could not imagine her father saying anything to distract her from her thoughts about Benjamin. After reaching the bottom of the stairwell, she noted that her mother and brothers were already seated in the room. Her father was standing before them.

Wendy noted her daughter’s appearance with a look of concern. She had never known her daughter to be so despondent. When Daphne hesitated at the entrance to the living-room, Wendy decided to encourage her forward.

“Come on, Babe, have a seat,” Wendy spoke softly as she patted the seat next to her on the couch.

Daphne dismissed her mother’s offer by moving two steps into the living-room wall. She then leaned back against the wall and folded her arms. Daniel noted his daughter’s sullen demeanor and elected to speak to it ahead of making his announcement.

“You okay?”

“Yeah Daddy, I’m fine,” Daphne answered in a soft voice.

“She’s been moping ever since she came home,” Adam reported in a mildly snide tone.

“I’m fine,” Daphne insisted with a tinge of anger in her tone.

Daniel looked to Wendy for an explanation for her behavior. She, in turn, gave him a look of disinterest along with a soft shake of her head. Daniel took a moment to ingest this while giving his daughter a look of concern.

“What did you want to tell us, Dad?” Sawyer spoke up into the silence two seconds later.

Daniel was awakened from his musing by this question. He turned to look at his family, one after the other while he formulated the appropriate words for the answer. He then explained the reason behind this meeting in one short statement.

“Family—we’re going to Saturn.” 


	9. Human Systems

Eric Pettorino was the fourth of six children procreated by Peter and Julia Pettorino. He grew up, more than one-hundred years earlier in an affluent community outside of San Jose, California. His parents were part owners of a successful software design company that they helped start. Academically, Eric followed in his parent’s footsteps and became a software design engineer. He became a richly successful entrepreneur in this field. By the age of thirty-one he had accumulated three times the wealth of his parents. He had a seven-bedroom home outside of San Diego, California, an attractive girlfriend, an abundance of friends, a sixty-five-foot-long yacht in San Diego Harbor and a condominium in New York City. Eric was living the life of his dreams. Half way through to his next birthday World War III began.

The war took a heavy toll on Eric’s family. His parents and four of his siblings did not survive past fifteen months from the start of the war. The family’s fortunes were victims of the war, as well. Eric’s business came to a full stop one day after the fighting started. He, his sister and her family took up residence at his San Diego home during the apocalypse that followed the war. Three years out from war’s end, he, his sister and her family, relocated to a starship in space. From their Eric’s fortunes began to rise again. He found a use for himself designing the control and operating systems for the robots that were constructing the means for human existence in space. Life was good again.

Eric excelled in this new world. As it grew, over the next forty years, so did his mark upon it. He became the foremost designer of software and control systems for construction and maintenance robots anywhere within the starcorp community. Over the past two decades, his enthusiasm for his work in this field waned to the point that he was simply going through the motions. He found it hard to imagine any new or exciting upgrades to his operating system. He had gotten to the point where he was devoting the bulk of his energy to social and romantic adventures. Work had become toil. The geniuses of his closest competitors were poised to overtake him in stature within another decade. He had reached the grand old age of ninety-five when his passion for his work was reborn.

When Eric got the call to report to the newly constructed Starship Dominion, he had no idea why. In the past, his work did not require him to relocate to perform it. Nonetheless, per the instructions of his superiors, he went to this starship without the expectation that anything new or exciting would happen. Shortly after arrival, he was delighted to learn that he was wrong. The chance of participating in the development of a robot with a new purpose and new capabilities was all he needed to hear to excite his imagination. When Joshua made him Head of Human Systems for the mow he could not have been more pleased. This was exactly where he wanted to be.

Over the two years that followed Eric’s appointment to the Head of Humans Systems for the mow he had accomplished little. The final design for the human interface with the systems and the software to run it was still up in the air. This did not mean that his mind was not ablaze with ideas. In fact, he had no shortage of ideas. He and his team was designing and redesigning dozens of configurations almost daily. From Eric’s point of view, this was the most exhilarating time of his life. However, not all that were a part of this endeavor shared this view of his situation.

“How soon can you start building virtual trainers?” Joshua questioned while taking his first three steps into Eric’s office.

“Trainers…?” Eric questioned back with a surprised inflection.

“Yeah,” Joshua insisted just as he stopped in front of Eric’s desk. “I need a mockup so I can start training pilots and working out plans for deploying the mows.”

“No, no,” Eric responded in an astonished tone. “We can’t do that. We’re nowhere close to actually constructing the cockpits for these things.”

This was a response that Joshua was not expecting. His reason for making this request was because of the schematic for the cockpit that Eric’s team produced. This they did at the behest of the team that was developing the mow’s mechanical systems. Because of this submission, Joshua assumed that it would be possible for Eric to construct a virtual cockpit.

“You just sent us the specs for the cockpit,” Joshua challenged with his brow furrowed.

“You asked for the dimensions, so we gave you that. But we’re not ready to plug in an operating system for it.”

Joshua was both astounded and angered by this report. He had been monitoring the progress of all the teams within the division that he was personally managing as well as each project that was under his administration. Up until this moment, he had no reason to be displeased with their rate of progress. He frequently asked for more to keep everyone racing ahead, but he was always mindful that he could have been getting far less. Up until this moment, he had this same impression regarding Eric’s team. The reports that he got back from him always insisted that they were ahead of schedule. Joshua had no reason to dispute this and every reason to trust it. After all, there was nothing constructive he could do with their work until the blueprint for the rest of the mow was finalized. When Joshua heard that they had produced a schematic of the cockpit this made him think of manufacturing trainers for the pilots.

“Why not?” Joshua questioned with a stunned expression. “What have you been doing in here for the past two years?”

“We’ve been doing the job you hired us to do,” Eric sharply asserted.

Eric had no idea what had brought on this outburst from Joshua. In his mind, all was going well with his portion of the project. However, at this moment, he could think of nothing to say to validate this that he had not already said in his reports.

“You told me that things were going great,” Joshua challenged back. “You said your team was ahead of schedule.”

“We are, but that doesn’t mean we have a fixed operating system yet,” Eric defended with a startled expression.

“What does that mean?” Joshua roared back with his hands thrown out in front of him.

“It means that we’re still brainstorming ideas,” Eric answered back as though he was speaking the obvious.

The term brainstorming was all that Joshua needed to hear to get his rage up. In his mind, he had Eric and his team far past the brainstorming phase. At this moment, he felt lied to. He could not help but think that Eric led him to believe that he was a lot further along than he was. His mind turned to the prospect of replacing him as the head of Human Systems and starting from scratch with someone else.

“Eric, I picked you for this position because of your reputation as the foremost robotics software engineer anywhere,” Joshua commenced with a look of disbelief. “Are you telling me that you can’t do this job?”

“We are doing the job, Joshua,” Eric responded flatly. “You need to give us time.”

“Time is something we don’t have,” Joshua asserted strongly. “We’ve already begun construction on the basestar. We should have a final blueprint for the mows in about a year. Everything is moving ahead schedule. I can’t have you hold us up, Eric. I can’t have you slowing down this project.”

“I am not holding you up,” Eric declared emphatically. “You’re holding me up.”

This was something that Joshua did not expect to hear. He gave Eric a look of confusion as he waited on him to explain that statement.

“We still don’t have set measurements on the mow’s power output or consumption. Every few weeks you’re giving us changes in its internal systems and mechanics.”

“So, how is that holding you up?” Joshua questioned with a look of confusion.

“Joshua, we’re building the operating system,” Eric annunciated definitively. “We need to know what this system has to control. We need to know power levels, the rate of power buildup. We need stats on engine performance, energy field production, weapon system stats. Some of this can be calibrated after the operating system has been put in place, but not all of it. We can’t go forward with a final operating system until the other sectors finish with research and development. We need the final schematics for the mow.”

Joshua took all of this in with a look of wonder. Up until this moment, he was not aware of the quantity of details the software engineers needed to complete the task set out for them.

Eric took a pause to note if Joshua comprehended what he just said. At the end of this delay, he added a final message to his explanation.

“We’re working on some great ideas on control mechanisms for the cockpit. You need to trust us, Joshua. We won’t let you down.”

“I’m sorry, Eric. I didn’t understand,” Joshua proffered with an apologetic look. “So how long do you think it will it take you to configure this cockpit and the operating system once you have the final blueprint?”

“Six months to a year…” Eric answered with a shrug.

“And there’s no way for you to start work on this ahead of time?” Joshua questioned out of curiosity.

“No, it can’t be done without the completed schematics,” Eric explained softly. “And it may take another six months of tweaking after that to get control mechanisms interfacing seamlessly with its human operators. Why?”

“That’s eighteen months from the date that we get the final schematic,” Joshua spoke out to no one in particular.

Eric took note of Joshua’s bewildered expression with a curious look of his own. He knew that this was not an excessive amount of time. Large projects regularly went through several months to complete the different phases of its development. He anticipated that Joshua would have factored this time into the project. At this moment, he was doubtful he had. He hesitated to ponder this and then he turned his doubt into a question.

“What’s wrong, Joshua?”

“It just feels like wasted time to me,” Joshua answered back. “We could have mows sitting around for six months, or more, doing nothing while we’re trying to figure out the best way to control and deploy them.”

Eric had given no thought to anything past the construction phase of the mow. Designing and perfecting the tactics of its use was not within his purview. How a machine was used after its construction was always someone else’s problem, and he generally gave no thought to it. His timetable was always built around the time he needed to do the job right.

“What do you mean by, deploy?”

“This is a weapons platform,” Joshua responded. “I need to work out battle formations and tactics. And I was hoping to get a jump on training for the pilots.”

Eric took a moment to consider Joshua’s concerns as a problem in need of a solution. This was a situation that he was not accustomed to considering. Shortly, his mind configured it into a problem that needed an answer. After giving it few seconds of thought, he offered the solution that he came up with.

“Okay, what I can do is create virtual trainers based upon the specifications that we have right now—I can fill in the blanks with—guesstimations—I can also program these trainers with your battle scenarios so that you can work out tactics for it. And, I suppose—I can start working on the interface ergonomics at the same time. If we did it this way, we might be able to trim off as much as a year.”

“But these virtual trainers won’t be a match for what we put in the mows in the end,” Joshua expressed with a questioning inflection.

“There will be some functionality that will differ from the final cockpit,” Eric agreed nonchalantly. “Hopefully, that won’t be anything major. I can update the design every few months to make it correlate with the new changes and additions to the mow’s specifications. But it would give you something to work with.”

Joshua took a few seconds to consider this idea before responding with a ponderous remark to himself more so than Eric.

“I won’t be able to train pilots with that.”

“It shouldn’t be, drastically, different from the final cockpit,” Eric assured with a shake of his head.

Joshua considered this for a few seconds more before countering this thinking with his decision.

“No, I don’t want to risk teaching pilots something that I might have to un-teach them at the last moment.”

“You still have to train them,” Eric reacted with a confused expression.

Joshua’s true concern was not for the training of the pilots. Finding the people that would be piloting the mows was being handled by a dedicated office far away from him. The only thing he knew about it was that they all would be chosen for their skills and experiences at operating spaceships and aircrafts. The possibility of last minute changes in the functionality and control system of the mow was a matter of concern for Joshua. But his greatest concern was about his own ability to competently command this space-force that he was building.

Joshua understood from the beginning why he was given command of this war machine. He knew that the very concept of this force was alien to most people with the credentials to apply for his position. Despite this Joshua was not eager to be in command. He, more so than any other, understood that his qualification was supported primarily by the fact that he imagined it into existence. In other areas, he feared that he was far less suited for the job. This notwithstanding, it was not a part of his nature to self-talk himself into failing. The more he questioned his fitness for the task the more he pushed himself to take up the challenge. Driven by his fears, Joshua was determined to make himself as fit as possible for command. To this end, he was desperate to play out battle scenarios that might prepare him for what could come. Eric’s declaration that he could not make that happen was a setback he was loathed to accept.

“We already have people lined up to pilot the mows,” Joshua reported with a near sullen expression. “They’re all skilled at piloting multiple crafts, both space-borne and airborne. It shouldn’t take long getting them up to speed.”

“So, what’s the problem?” Eric asked with a look of complete confusion.

“Without virtual trainers and pilots for them, I can’t run battle scenarios.”

Eric considered this for several seconds with an almost amused expression. He shortly concluded that Joshua was primarily interested in experimenting with different combat scenarios. At the end of his deliberation, he responded Joshua’s conclusion with a counter proposal.

“I’ll still need test pilots to work out the ergonomics and for taking readings on the interface. We can experiment with different battle scenarios at the same time.”

Joshua paused to ponder this. Eric elected to jump into this silence with another selling point.

“I can run the whole thing from here. The only thing you’ll have to do is outline the combat situations so that we can program them into the computer.”

Joshua continued to consider this idea for another several seconds. At the end of this time, he announced his conclusion with a definitive nod of his head.

“Okay, let’s do that.”


	10. All Is Fair

“Come on,” Oscar called out as he beckoned with his hand. “Over here.”

Oscar Nehru was a five-foot-six-inch tall, fifteen-year-old. Thin, with dark hair and a tan complexion, he was, by all appearance, an average teenage boy. Most that knew him personally thought him more than a little hyperactive. However, most perceived this to be an acceptable quirk of his personality. This was a perception that Oscar gave no thought to. It was not a part of his nature to slow down long enough to give consequence to casual observations about him.

In Oscar’s eagerness to show his new friend the most popular place on the Starship for adolescents, he hurried the pace into the Amaterasu Fun and Games Center. The building was a two-story high, structure situated on the promenade of the starship by the same name. Teenagers aboard the Amaterasu flocked to this location for the games and entertainment during after school hours. A video game arcade, a theater, a roller rink and a food court could be found beneath the roof of the center. Adjacent to it were sports and outdoor amusement facilities. These were another reason for the adolescent community to be attracted to this vicinity. For Oscar, the video game arcade, with its large number of virtual world game pods, was his favorite place to be when he was not at home. This was an affinity that all his friends shared. He anticipated that Sawyer would be a new addition to the group.

The virtual world game pods were video games that the participant climbed into. Using full body exoskeleton motion capture suits and helmet mounted displays, gamers enjoyed the perception of being in the game. Because of the size and expense of the spheres, these games were rarely found anywhere outside of an arcade.

“This is great,” Sawyer announced as he followed Oscar through the maze of virtual world game pods. “How many pods do they have in here?”

“Fifty-seven,” Oscar reported as he continued to lead at a hurried pace.

At fifteen years of age, Sawyer was older than Oscar by five months. This proximity in age was the reason why they shared a World History class. This course was the instrument that was responsible for their meeting. Sawyer first met Oscar two days earlier. This was the day after his arrival aboard the Starship Amaterasu. On this day, they exchanged greetings and names but no more than that. It was not until Sawyer’s second day of school aboard the Amaterasu that his association with him turned into a friendship. The first public indication of this friendship was their arrival together at the arcade.

Over the past four years, Sawyer had grown five inches to his new height of five-foot-eleven. Over this same time, his enthusiasm for sports grew. There was no sport aboard a starship that he had not played on more than one occasion. Slender, with a moderately muscular build, broad-shouldered, light brown in complexion and decidedly handsome, Sawyer had maturated into a pleasant sight to the eyes of the ladies. This was a distinction that he had just begun to notice. However, his physical appearance had no effect on his adeptness with girls. Sawyer was not a lady’s man. In fact, he had no romantic experiences to speak of.

“You’re going to like this game,” Oscar encouraged as he continued to blaze a trail across the arcade room.

This was a regular outing for Oscar and his clique of friends. They spent nearly all their off days at the arcade. It was not uncommon for most of the adolescents aboard the Amaterasu to be somewhere within this vicinity on their day off from school. Sawyer had planned to explore this site on his own. Oscar’s invite was a convenient opportunity to do just that. Making new friends was not something that Sawyer did with ease. Oscar’s gregarious nature saved him from the trouble of having to initiate the effort. He knew that Oscar had a small group of friends and that all of them would be in the arcade at this time. In Sawyer’s mind, this was a chance to become part of a group once again.

“Hey,” Oscar called out to three teenagers, two boys and a girl.

All three of the teenagers were standing outside of a virtual world game pod. In appearance, the pod was a ten-foot high sphere with external supports. A large monitor next to the hatch of the pod displayed an avatar of the gamer along with the digital world that he or she was interacting in. The three teenagers were watching this monitor when Oscar walked up to them.

“Hey Oscar,” Martin greeted as he turned in his direction.

“Hi,” Rebecca greeted with a smile an instant after Martin.

Martin Fitch was a fairly-attractive sixteen-year-old boy. He stood five-foot-eight-inches tall and looked to be ideally proportioned in every way. Rebecca Sullivan was a pretty, fifteen-year-old girl. She measured little higher than five-foot-six and was clearly at the height of her bloom. Sawyer surmised from the way that she shouldered up next to Martin that the relationship between them was close. 

Sixteen-year-old Anthony Skolnick was the third teenager waiting outside the game pod. Six-foot-one in height and thin, he had a gangly appearance. His facial features were less than handsome and his disposition was overtly cheerful.

“It’s about time,” Anthony declared with a large grin. “Who’s this,” he questioned with a look to Sawyer.

Oscar had anticipated the need to introduce Sawyer to the others, and he promptly did just that. They were all pleased to meet him, and the feeling was mutual. The trio of new faces in front of Sawyer immediately began to make inquiries about him, his family, the starcorp that he came from and his time aboard the Amaterasu. Eager to please, Sawyer answered each question without reservation. During the whole of this time, he noted that he had only a portion of their attentions. Martin, Rebecca, Anthony, and Oscar would intermittently look away to keep tabs on the points being tallied on the monitor closest to them. Sawyer gave it a fleeting glance on two occasions; however, the bulk of his attention was devoted to supplying answers to their questions.

“Uh oh, CC is going to pass you, Oscar,” Rebecca announced with a grin.

No one had questions for Sawyer after this. Their attentions became fixated on the game pod monitor. The steadily climbing score that was being tabulated in the top right corner of the screen was the primary focal point of all that were looking. Sawyer’s attention was drawn to this as well. His interest in the monitor was provoked by the intrigue the others had for it.

The arcade room was effectively a separate building that was linked to the theater and roller rink by a common food court situated at the center. The sound of more than two-hundred people talking and moving about filled every corner of the arcade. The play of music, piped in through speakers, could barely be heard over the din of the crowd. In addition to the crowd of people, the arcade games emitted a significant amount of noise exterior to the pod. The game pod was a sphere within a sphere. When the game was running, it was possible to hear the interior sphere rotating about inside the pod. Small speakers connected to the monitors allowed nearby onlookers to hear what the gamer was hearing within the virtual world they were participating in.

Through the use of the head-mounted monitor and the exoskeleton motion capture suit, the virtual world game pods gave the player a near full immersion experience. Smell and taste were the only two senses that were not affected. Inside, the exoskeleton was connected, at the lower back, to a manipulator arm that extended down from the center of the sphere. The arm had joints at both ends and one in the middle. Small actuator motors within the joints enabled the arm to bend and swivel in all directions. The interior sphere rotated in all directions as well. This configuration gave the gamer freedom of motion. When secured within the exoskeleton, the occupant maintained a fixed position in the center of the sphere, above, below and away from the interior walls. The exoskeleton was under the control of the pod’s computer, which reacted to the wearer’s commands and the limitations of the digital world it was processing at the time. Programming within the computer manipulated the exoskeleton, and the sphere, to simulate the sensation of walking, running, flying, falling and swimming. With the game running, a virtual world would normally be projected inside the head-mounted monitor. This configuration provided the gamer with the simulated experience of being in the game.

Christine Chandler, CC, was playing a game that went by the name of “Knights of Fortune.” Within the pod, she was battling ghoulish guards, ogres, fiendish knights, devil hounds, evil wizards, witches, and dragons. She did this while navigating her way to the treasure room of a castle. The interior of the castle was a maze of halls, chambers, and stairs. Hidden dangers and resources hid behind every door. With each successful transit through to the treasure room, the gamer won a fortune that he or she used to purchase weapons, spells, and charms to be used in the next castle. CC was closing in on Oscar’s highest score. Shortly after losing her last charm, CC’s avatar was killed. Without a charm to return her avatar to a previous time in its life, the game was over. The computer tallied the final score and displayed it on the monitor. She was slightly ahead of Oscar. He had been, up until then, the highest ranked player in their group.

“Ha, ha,” Anthony laughed with a look at Oscar. “She beat your score.”

“It won’t last long,” Oscar insisted with a smile and a shake of his head.

Several seconds after the end of the game, the hatch to the pod swung open automatically. As this happened, a plank extended out from beneath the platform outside of the hatch and two feet into the sphere. The manipulator arm promptly positioned the gamer onto the plank. CC began detaching herself from the exoskeleton and head mounted display the instant she was settled onto the plank. After thirty seconds of unlatching, she stepped out of the pedals beneath her feet and through the hatchway. Even as she did this, CC was celebrating her success.

“Hey! Who is number one now?”

Rebecca acknowledged her inquiry with a gleefully spoken answer.

“You are, CC.”

CC stood in front of the hatch, at the top of a three-step staircase, and did a brief celebratory dance. Shortly into this, she noticed Sawyer and stopped to address him.

“Hey, I know you,” CC called out with a cheerful expression. “You’re in my Algebra class.”

Sawyer had recognized CC as someone in one of his classes. However, the name CC was unfamiliar to him. He suspected that her actual name was something else, but what that name was eluded him at this moment. She was little more than just a face among the dozens that he had etched into his memory since his arrival aboard the Amaterasu. Its only distinction was that it was cuter than most.

CC was thought, by most, to be very cute. This perception was supported by more than just her face, her short carefree hairstyle, her olive-brown complexion and her lithe five-foot-four frame. Her perky disposition did much to shape this opinion of her in others.

“Yeah, hi,” Sawyer responded with a slight wave of his hand.

“What’s your name?” CC quickly countered with a smile.

CC began bounding down the stairs, ahead of Sawyer’s reply, with her arms triumphantly stretched out. As she did this Sawyer gave his name in a soft tone of voice. He then froze in response to CC’s apparent inattention to him. She had, within that instant, turned her thoughts to her friends and the new high score that she just posted. She spent the next two minutes crowing about this accomplishment to Oscar and fending off his attempts to minimize her new high score. Sawyer watched this display of exaltation and playful derision from off to the side. He did this with a passive demeanor. He was startled from this idle observation when CC made a sudden turn to him and asked a question.

“Do you play?”

Sawyer answered this in the affirmative and was promptly asked by the group to do just that. He offered no resistance to this and climbed into the game. He was not familiar with Knights of Fortune, but he had some experience in similar games. After, close to, fifteen minutes of play he climbed out of the pod with a respectable score, but it was not high enough to make him a threat to Oscar and CC.

Dungeon and Dragon games were not popular with Sawyer. He could not recall playing in more than half a dozen of this ilk. Like most starcorp adolescents, he enjoyed playing virtual world video games and he had his favorites. However, this was not a preoccupation with him. They were entertaining diversions and something to do with friends, but tennis was his favorite pastime. He devoted most of his spare time trying to perfect his game. Much of his attention to virtual world video games was brought on by the encouragement of others that were friendly to him, and by his desire to be their friend. Because of this dynamic, Sawyer spent the next two hours going in and out of various virtual world video pods, testing his skills against his new-found friends.

Sawyer blended in with this new group of acquaintances with relative ease. Oscar continued to be excessively friendly with everyone. It was outside of his nature to be any other way with anyone, or so it seemed to Sawyer. Anthony tended to feed off Oscar’s energy and vice versa. At times, it was almost a competition between them to see which could be the most entertaining to the group. Rebecca, Martin, and CC were little more than an audience to their antics. From Sawyer’s perspective, all of them seemed to be accepting of him, to a greater or lesser degree. He perceived Oscar as the champion for his membership into their clique. Anthony and Martin looked to be happy with his addition. He interpreted Rebecca’s demeanor as pleasantly accepting, and CC seemed overly indifferent to his membership. These were dispositions that Sawyer was agreeable with.

At the end of their tour of the various arcade games, the six of them turned their attentions to eating and wandered into the food court. After a brief scrutiny of the available delicacies, they each acquired their chosen fare and began to make their way to a table in the wide expanse of choices. It was at this time that Sawyer saw her, Sharon Stewart. He recognized her immediately. He had learned her name two days before. He noted her coming towards the cafeteria counter. He gave no notice to the company she was with. At this moment, Sawyer had eyes only for her and to his surprise, she returned his gaze.

“Hi Sharon,” Oscar loudly greeted.

Suddenly, at the sound of Oscar speaking her name, Sharon stopped before them, much to Oscar and company’s surprise. Sharon’s company followed her lead and stopped.

“Hi,” Sharon softly greeted back to Oscar with a glance his way followed by a look back to Sawyer.

“Are you ready to ditch tall, dark and clueless and fall in love with me?” Oscar toyed with a wide smile.

Anthony and Martin grinned in response to this inquiry. Rebecca displayed some amusement for it and Sharon gave it a hint of a grin. Two of Sharon’s company, Andrew, and Georgette were entertained enough to give it a snicker as well. Sawyer was noncommittal to the remark and CC appeared to be preoccupied with other feelings toward Sharon. Joseph was the only person there that was clearly offended by the Oscar’s inquiry. He was standing possessively close to Sharon.

Fifteen-year-old Sharon Stewart was arguably the prettiest adolescent female aboard the Amaterasu. She stood five-feet-nine-inches tall and appeared to be perfectly proportioned along every inch of her length. Her manner was cool and fashionably pleasant. She gave out smiles as though they were gifts for others to cherish. Adolescent males favored her with their unspoken adorations, and she greedily collected them as though they were medals to be worn. Among the adolescent female population, it appeared to them as if she could have any boy of her choice. So far, Joseph Hussmann was the only male peer she deemed to be worthy of that station.

“Oscar,” Joseph called out in a derisive tone. “Why don’t you do everyone a favor and keep your wet dreams in your pants.”

Joseph Hussmann was seventeen years of age. Tall and dark as Oscar described, Joseph was also quite handsome. He stood six-foot-one-inch in height. His build was slender, and he had the look of a well-sculpted athlete.

“He speaks,” Oscar bellowed mockingly. “Who knew?”

Joseph gave Oscar an angry stare and a point of his finger before responding to Oscar’s slight.

“You’re about to get yourself into trouble.”

There was a low tolerance for violence in space. Because of this, Oscar had little fear of Joseph. In response, he gave Joseph a smug smile and elected not to push it any further than that. Sharon took advantage of this silence to push the talk into another direction.

“Hi, Rebecca, CC, Martin, Anthony,” Sharon greeted pleasantly and with a glance to each.

Rebecca and Martin pleasantly returned her greeting. Anthony happily did so. CC was the last to acknowledge her salutation and responded to it with a grudging, “hi.” It was at the end of this exchange when Sharon acted on her true reason for speaking with them.

“And what’s your name?” Sharon asked with a look and a smile in Sawyer’s direction.

Everyone thought this was an innocent inquiry with exceptions for Joseph and CC. They both had their suspicions that Sharon was entertaining designs on him, and in this they both were correct. Joseph took an immediate disliking for the newcomer standing before him. CC’s contempt for Sharon was not a new condition, but its intensity did increase and by more than just a notch.

Sawyer was discombobulated by the attention he was getting from Sharon Stewart. He had seen her on three occasions over the past two days, but he had never dared to entertain that she might be interested in him. The sight of her staring back at him flirtatiously had him considering romantic scenarios involving her and him. For a moment, he lost himself in these thoughts. It was the sudden appearance of an amused grin on Sharon’s face that awakened Sawyer from his musing.

“Sawyer—Beck,” he replied hesitantly.

Sharon gave Sawyer a mischievous smile and quick look down and up before responding to his report verbally.

“Nice to meet you, Sawyer—Beck.”

Behind this, Sharon offered up another large smile, and then she and her company walked away. Sawyer visually followed her departure for a couple of seconds. At the end of this, he and his new-found friends turned their attentions to the task of picking a place to sit down with their meals. Nearly a minute into this Sawyer shook off his romantic notions of him and Sharon. He convinced himself that this chance meeting was an innocent flirtation, and that a girl as pretty as Sharon could not have any romantic designs on him. What Sawyer did not know about this chance encounter was that Sharon already knew his name, but she did not want him to know that. He was also unaware that CC’s inquiry about his moniker was equally superfluous.

After eating his lunch and playing several more virtual world video games, Sawyer was summoned home by his father, via his com-link. He returned to the family residence six hours from the time that he left it. When he walked through the front door, he found Daniel, Wendy, Daphne and Adam waiting in the living room. He took particular-note of the look of agitation on his mother’s face. The rest of the family looked relatively normal, but all seemed to be waiting for him. Daphne appeared to be more impatient than what was normal for her.

“Have a seat, Sawyer,” Daniel directed with a motion towards the sofa.

Sawyer moved towards the sofa with a look of confusion. He expressed this with a question as he sat down.

“What’s going on?”

“There is something happening that your mother and I have to talk to all of you about,” Daniel explained calmly.

“Are we in some kind of trouble?” Daphne asked with a hint of irritation in her tone.

Wendy was quick to respond to this in a definitive voice.

“No, we’re fine! But there are things going on with this move that we didn’t expect.”

“What things?” Sawyer queried quizzical look.

After a brief look at his wife for permission to speak, Daniel answered this inquiry in a solemn tone of speech.

“RG01 is not a starcorp, at least not in a conventional way.”

Daniel and Wendy spent most of the past three days working their way through the human resources division of RG01. Much of this time was spent waiting in a queue. The act of hiring and processing new people was in high gear within this counterfeit starcorp. Dozens of recent hires were coming in daily. The business of incorporating them into RG01 was a non-stop activity. The orientation for more than two-hundred new arrivals came to an end a few hours earlier. Daniel and Wendy were in attendance. The information relayed over the course of this three-hour induction took them both by surprise. All what Daniel and Wendy wanted to say to their children was derived from this meeting.

“Then what is it?” Daphne asked with a look of curiosity.

“RG01 is an installation for the manufacture of weapons,” Daniel explained with a look at his daughter.” The ticker symbol is the joint property of all BX01 member starcorps.”

“It’s a military installation,” Wendy added in a succinct declarative.

Adam became visibly excited by the term military installation and he voiced this feeling with equal enthusiasm.

“Does that mean we’re going to get uniforms?”

“This is not a game, Adam,” Wendy admonished sternly. “The starcorps are making preparations for war with Earth. This is serious. They’re planning to go to war with everyone that we left behind.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Daniel countered in a calming tone.

“Yes, it is. It’s just that simple,” Wendy bellowed back defiantly.

Over the past four years, the Becks had adapted to their lives in space, for the most part. For Wendy, this occurred more quickly than anyone expected. Her love for the science of Botany overruled all her insecurities. DCT01 quickly became her favorite place to be. Her fascination with the scientific boundaries that they were expanding drowned out her prejudice towards the Spacers that abandoned the Earth at the tail end of the war. Her fear that she was breaking some moral commandment by joining them faded with the passage of time. This distance from these old feelings had remained in effect up until this moment. The thought that the starcorps might be preparing for a war with Earth brought them back with a vengeance.

“We don’t know how they plan to use these weapons that they’re making here or why,” Daniel corrected in a mildly asserted speech.

Wendy was not dissuaded from her position by this and exuded this disposition with a brazenly spoken question.

“What difference does that make?”

Wendy’s strident opposition to what the starcorps were doing here was becoming increasingly worrisome to Daniel. He feared that her bombastic assertions would unduly alarm their children and convince them to follow her lead.

“This is our home. When we immigrated to DCT, we made a commitment to the starcorps,” Daniel almost pleaded. “We chose to become Spacers.”

Daphne, Sawyer, and Adam had no position on either side of this debate that their parents were having. Their only interest in it was for the outcome. They understood that their parents were in the act of deciding all their futures. They had little regard for the politics of the situation. Their interest was limited to the outcome of their dispute.

“We didn’t commit to this,” Wendy argued back. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Is there going to be a war?” Daphne suddenly questioned with a look of concern.

Daniel took note of the anxiety on his daughter’s face and measured his response to her question to lessen it.

“Right now, we don’t know anything. There have been some angry words, coming from both sides, about forcing the starcorps back under Earth control. But this argument has been going on for more than a decade. Honey, I don’t see us on the precipice of war.”

“Then why the secrecy, Daniel,” Wendy questioned with flamboyant exasperation. “Why are they going to such lengths to keep this a secret from Earth?”

It was beyond Wendy’s control to rationalize this move by the starcorps as precautionary. The concept of this privileged society, as she saw them, taking an opposing stance to Mother Earth was difficult for her to justify.

“I don’t know,” Daniel responded softly and with a shake of his head. “But it’s not going to do us any good worrying about it.”

“So, are we going to leave?” Adam questioned his mother with a look of confusion on his face.

“Yes, and I think we must,” Wendy confirmed promptly.

“No, we just got here,” Daphne countered with a look of panic.

“Baby, we have to leave,” Wendy implored to her daughter.

Daphne had no response to her mother’s plaintive assertion. The distress in Wendy’s speech made her reluctant to speak otherwise. Sawyer was quick to fill in this silence.

“Leave to go where?” Sawyer questioned abruptly. “We’re Spacers now.”

Sawyer, more so than anyone of them, identified with their new home. For Adam, the starcorps had yet to evolve beyond being a toy to play with. For Daphne, this was her new reality. For Daniel, the starcorps represented a safe home for his family. But for Sawyer, the starcorps were the springboard for his aspirations. All his dreams for himself were entwined within his perception of the future of the starcorps. For him, the thought of leaving it for Earth was a move in the wrong direction.

“We go home,” Wendy replied as though she was speaking the obvious. “We go back to Earth.”

Daphne noted this answer with a gasp and a look of shock.

“No! I like it here,” Adam expressed in the same instant with a look of dismay.

“There’s no going back to Earth,” Daniel declared in a corrective tone of voice. “They won’t let us do that.”

Daphne’s shocked expression visibly relaxed after hearing her father’s assertion. It then turned to confusion in response to her mother’s contradiction.

“Yes, we can. All we have to do is submit our resignations and we’re out.”

“When we accepted this transfer, we signed an agreement,” Daniel gently explained. “A portion of that agreement said that we could not be repatriated back to Earth until the end of this project.”

Wendy understood they would be forfeiting their financial portfolio by failing to fulfill their contractual obligation. She also understood that the family would have to remain in Titan space until this project was completed or exposed to the public. However, this had no effect on her decision. Her only concern was for moving her family out of harm’s way as soon as she could.

“Fine, so let’s do that,” Wendy annunciated with a shrug of her shoulders.

“If we do that, Wendy, we lose everything.” Daniel returned with a look of astonishment. “We lose it all. Our entire stock portfolio will be seized.”

“I don’t care about the portfolio,” Wendy railed back at him. “I don’t want my family in the middle of a war in space. I say we leave.”

Daniel understood and appreciated Wendy’s concern. He even shared them to a smaller extent. His reluctance to support it was due to his thinking that this military buildup was not a prelude to war. Nonetheless, he chose to avoid a dictatorial position by endorsing the general thinking of the whole family.

“This has to be a family decision,” Daniel spoke with reluctance.

“No!” Wendy countered vehemently. “We’re not voting on this. I say we…”

Before Wendy could finish her declaration, Daphne inserted herself into the debate with a softly worded declarative.

“I’m not leaving. You can do what you want, but I’m staying.”

The family went silent with shock at the hearing of this. None of them expected this from Daphne, nor could any of them account for what was behind it. After several seconds of silence, Daniel looked to his eldest son.

“Sawyer?”

Sawyer had a conflict between his desire to be a Spacer and the obligation he felt toward his mother and her fears. Shortly he looked to her for some expression to weigh his vote in her favor. A few seconds later he softly announced the result of that effort.

“I think I want to stay, Mom.”

At that moment, Wendy knew that all was lost. She anticipated that Adam’s vote would fall in line with his brother and sister. She took three seconds to display her disappointment by staring down at the floor. At the end of this time, she turned and went to her room.

A few minutes after this vote, Daphne slipped away from the apartment. Within fifteen minutes’ time from this, she was in the apartment of Benjamin Romano and in his arms. Their bussing began from the moment they met with barely a greeting between them. Ten minutes into this rendezvous, Daphne pushed back to ask her lover a question.

“Is there going to be a war?”

Benjamin gave the question a dozen seconds of thought before answering it with the best explanation he could contrive.

“The Alberta Alliance is calling for a unified posture among the Earth States with regards to us. It’s kind of a one-for-all, all-for-one, thing. More than a two-dozen states are supporting it. There is talk that if it’s ratified by half that number of states then there could be a war.”

“Will it get ratified by half that many?” Daphne questioned with a hint of worry in her tone.

“If Eckhart gets re-elected—yeah.”


	11. New Business

“Congratulations Prime Minister,” an enthusiastic young aid greeted as Eckhart approached.

Eckhart strode by him quickly while flashing a smile and a nod his way. The past hour had conditioned him to the practice of keeping his responses to a minimum. Predictions from the press that he would win his bid for re-election were coming in for the past three hours. His opponent conceded to his inevitable defeat, via a phone call, nearly one hour earlier. Despite this, Eckhart had been delaying a public announcement of his win until that point in the counting of the votes that equated it as a mathematical certainty. This report came in just a few minutes before. In response to this latest affirmation Eckhart set off for the hotel banquet room to make his victory speech.

One year earlier Eckhart’s chance of winning re-election was deemed improbable by nearly all the political pundits giving attention to the race. They expected his base to provide him with a respectable showing, but none thought this would be large enough to overcome the antipathy the masses felt towards his administration. The course he had steered for the state did little to improve the economic fortunes of its inhabitants. This slow deterioration of the people’s conditions was a stark contrast to the fate of peoples in states on friendly terms with the starcorps. Despite the prejudice that the majority felt towards the Spacers, a large majority of the Alberta Alliance’s populace was not prepared to suffer for this conviction. This situation was, for a long time, a major thorn in Eckhart’s re-election plans. The severity of this thorn prick began to diminish a year earlier with the introduction of the United Front Pact.

Eckhart authored the United Front Pact and Peter Carr, his Minister of State, was tasked with the job of marketing it to all the heads of states about the Earth. The basic provision of the Pact was that all the states would share in the profits and the hardships that came with their dealings with the starcorps. It required that no state accept or solicit gifts, resources, and services from the starcorps that create a disparity between them and a member state of the pact. The passage of this pact had the promise of overcoming the unevenness of assistance that the states were getting from the starcorps. It was a workaround for the absence of investment treaties between the states of Earth.

Without some form of agreement between the states of Earth, they found it impossible to form up into any kind of confederacy. There was the promise in the United Front Pact that this could change. Earthers found common ground in it. Its popularity transcended all territorial disputes, along with the myriad of social, ethnic and religious discords between the states. Every politician on the Earth had to take a position regarding it. For the voters of the Alberta Alliance, this proposal represented a course change in their future without the sacrifice of their rancor towards the starcorps. For Eckhart, it was the saving grace of his administration.

The race for re-election was close but, in the end, Eckhart prevailed with a slightly definitive margin. With the popularity of the United Front Pact and his re-election, Eckhart had hope that he would be able to fulfill his unspoken crusade, the subjugation of the starcorps. He saw in this pact an avenue for uniting the states of Earth. He believed that he could parlay an agreement on this into future agreements of greater significance. For Eckhart, this was a new and exciting development in his political career. Now that he had won another term as the Prime Minister of the Alberta Alliance he was eager to dispense with the campaign machinery and move forward with this plan.

Eckhart, his campaign manager, and three members of his support staff hurried down to the hotel banquet hall to finalize the election process. Eckhart was eager to make his speech and leave. The others were simply trying to keep pace with him. In short order, Eckhart completed this task. Little more than twenty minutes behind that he was out the door and in transit for his office. An hour past this he was there conferring with five of his ministers and three members of his office staff.

“What have you heard?” Eckhart commanded of Carr to report a second after he had entered the office.

“It’s too early to tell, Prime Minister,” Carr reported as he approached the empty chair in front of the desk.

Peter Carr knew without asking that Eckhart was anxious to know how his re-election was affecting their drive to recruit states behind the United Front Pact. The hope was that an election win for Eckhart would translate into an avalanche of states promising their support for the pact. Eckhart, more so than all others, was deeply invested in this prospect. He was not prepared to wait for any appreciable period for a final tally of calls from other heads of states that were declaring their fealty to the cause. He wanted to hear the numbers as they were coming in.

“You’ve made calls, haven’t you?” Eckhart questioned back with authority.

“A few,” Carr responded with a nod as he sat in the chair. “They’re still crunching numbers.”

“What numbers?” Eckhart challenged with a hint of hysterics. “I won. They should be climbing over each other to get on board with this.”

“There are a lot of heads of states out there that don’t have the base that you have, Prime Minister,” Carr softly stressed. “They’re going to want to weigh the risks.”

Eckhart did not care for this answer, but he understood it. He knew a win by a large margin would have pulled in a dozen heads of states within the first hour after the election. The implication that their support for this pact would bolster their chances for re-election would have been too irresistible to pass up. This not being the case, and the fact that pledges of support were slow to come in, Eckhart knew that the heads of other states were calculating the downside of being too closely aligned with him.

Eckhart was still the most popular politician about the globe among the militantly anti-starcorp population. However, his crossover popularity into the moderate populace had declined significantly over the past three years. This group was indispensable to his ambitions. The starcorps, severely, penalized the Alberta Alliance economically for obstructing the passage of the Thames/BX01 investment treaty. The impact of this stiffened the resolve of the militants and weakened Eckhart’s appeal among the moderates. The decline in Alberta’s economic fortunes did not go unnoticed within the global political community. Eckhart’s weight of influence had all but disappeared. Over the past two years, no one sought his endorsement during their election campaigns. Eckhart desperately wanted to reverse this situation. He knew, without the clout to leverage other heads of states to fall in line behind him, there was no chance of him directing any kind of assault, economic or military, against the starcorps. The United Front Pact was the vehicle he hoped to restore his political clout.

Eckhart suspected that Carr had members of his staff making calls and checking the numbers as they spoke. He would have preferred discussing the positive response he expected to get from the states that they promoted this pact to directly. But he could see that this was not going to be the case at present. In place of this discussion, he turned his attention to an appraisal of his post re-election status.

“And what do your people say?” Eckhart questioned Carr grudgingly.

“Well, there’s no doubt that you’ve regained some clout,” Carr reported with a positive inflection. “I estimate by this time tomorrow we will have half a dozen states firmly committed to this Pact.”

“And after that,” Eckhart challenged glumly.

“The going will likely be slow after that,” Carr reported in a matter of fact manner. “I am sure that there will be dozens of states watching you, Prime Minister. But if we can push this pact through the legislature of—twenty states, most the other states will fall like dominoes.”

Eckhart considered this with a decidedly unoptimistic look. He gave a few seconds of thought to this, and then he pondered out the question that it produced.

“What’s the timeframe that we’re looking at for all of this?”

“To get this pact in full swing, I believe that we’re looking at a minimum of ten years,” Carr casually answered after a second of calculation. “Twenty is a more likely number.”

Eckhart took this in with a pondering frown and silence. The Minister of Defense, George Wilkinson, was not so contemplative and quickly reacted to this report with an intonation of shock in his voice.

“Twenty years! If this pact doesn’t take hold soon, and in a big way, we’ll be out of a job in twenty years.”

Carr ignored the direction that this remark came from. He suspected that Eckhart shared this sentiment and focused his attention on him.

“That might be the case, but this pact is not going anywhere,” Carr expressed excitedly. “We’ve started something here, Prime Minister. This is not going to go away. This is just the beginning. When enough states sign on to this, the starcorps will be forced to deal with us as a block of states and it won’t matter what they do after that. They can castigate us. They can favor us. It doesn’t matter. This pact will become the cornerstone of a new cooperation among the states—the reemergence of trade—interstate commerce. And as this cooperative grows stronger more states will join in to become a part of it. When that happens, we’re looking at industrialization on a global scale. In fifty years’ time, the domination of the starcorps could be a thing of the past.”

Eckhart was not interested in a long-term strategy for displacing the starcorps as the dominant power in the solar system. His aspirations were far more hands on. He wanted to be the captain of the vessel that destroyed the starcorps. He rationalized, within his own mind, that the starcorps owed Earth a debt that needed to be collected. Publicly, he spoke of appropriating the starcorps to service the needs of Earth first. But, silently, in the back of his mind he dreamed of punishing the inhabitants of the starcorps for the crime of being the object of his intense hate.

“Keep me apprised of your progress,” Eckhart fumed after a moment of silence. “I want to know who signs on to the pact and who declines.”

Eckhart knew that there was nothing more that he could do on this subject. Despite his efforts to the contrary, he always suspected that his need for vengeance would never be satiated, and he grudgingly accepted this as the reality. With some mental effort, he pushed away from this subject and devoted the next forty minutes to the business of his administration. At the end of this time, he questioned the group for any new business that needed to be discussed. After a moment of silence, George Wilkinson, the Minister of Defense began to speak on a new subject.

“There is some peculiar talk coming from the starcorps,” Wilkinson reported halfheartedly.

“What kind of talk?” Eckhart questioned with a shrug.

“There’s a rumor going around that there’s a starcorp working on some kind of secret project in the Saturn System.”

Eckhart was not particularly intrigued by this. The starcorps were always expanding and growing their presence in the solar system. Nonetheless, he asked the question that this topic provoked.

“Which starcorp?”

“RG01, it’s new,” Wilkinson reported back casually. “It’s only a few years old. I haven’t been able to get any details on it, which is strange.”

“Why is that?” Carr questioned straightaway.

“Our contacts in other starcorps don’t seem to know anything about RG01,” Wilkinson reported with a slight shake of his head. “And they seem to have their own suspicions about it.”

Eckhart’s attention was roused by this report. And he noted that Carr was equally curious and lost in thought. Eckhart turned his attention to his Secretary of State in reaction to this.

“What are you thinking?”

Carr took a moment to finish his thought before giving Eckhart the answer to his query.

“Saturn is awfully far away for a starcorp. But if I wanted to keep something a secret, that was too large to hide, that’s where I would put it.”

Eckhart and Carr took two seconds to exchange looks of concern. At the end of this time, Eckhart turned his attention to his Minister of Defense and gave him a succinct directive.

“Do whatever you have to and find out everything you can about RG01.”


	12. Hurry Up and Wait

“I love you,” Daphne whispered after cuddling her head atop Benjamin’s chest.

The two of them had just finished making love. Daphne threw her left leg over Benjamin’s left leg while wrapping her left arm around his waist. She pulled her body forward until it was snug against his. She inhaled and let it out in a soft sigh. She nestled into the heat that emanated from his body while breathing across his chest.

“I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you,” Benjamin whispered back.

Daphne was gratified by these words. She smiled at the hearing of it and tightened her embrace. She had never wanted anyone’s love as much as she wanted Benjamin’s. Hearing this sentiment verbalized by him was the height of satisfaction for her. She could not imagine experiencing greater pleasure from any future event. Her instinct was to hold on to this experience for as long as she could. A second later she shut her eyes in the hope that the absence of sight would enable her to dissolve into this moment.

Benjamin was equally enamored with the moment. His sexual encounters had been many, but his romantic adventures had been few and far in between. This truth was a result of his seven years of life in space. Benjamin quickly learned, after immigrating up into a starcorp, that the majority of women there, especially the ones that were far older than he, were eager to entertain his sexual desires. And those that were not eager were usually happily affixed with a significant other. He also learned that most single women, of advanced years, were reluctant to be in a traditional marriage contract. Social contracts were far preferable.

The female population of the starcorps had a large minority of women of senior age with twenty-something-year-old anatomies. For these women, the prospect of tying themselves to any one man was regularly frowned upon. This was especially true when it came to men that had financial portfolios that were, largely, inferior to theirs. Typically, these women were all about the physical pleasure of the sex act and had no use for the romance. As a young new immigrant to the starcorps, Benjamin was happy to indulge their desires. He dove into the social market with reckless abandon.

The Social Market was the catchall term for all non-traditional and contractually governed mating that went on within a starcorp. The system was managed by lawyers, in place of pimps. They authored and filed social contracts for a fee. The starcorps embraced this as an effective way of tracking sexual partners and stemming the spread of social diseases. It also had the benefit of curtailing expensive and contentious divorces. The extended lives of the spacers, coupled with their extended youthful vigor, were beginning to destroy the institution of marriage. Social contracts had the virtue of having preset lifespans. It also worked out financial responsibilities and awards in advance. All non-traditional social contracts came to an end automatically and had to be renewed to be continued. The Social Market did not replace the institution of marriage, but it did influence the creation of an alternate name for them, traditional social contracts.

The process of entering, and negotiating the terms of, a social contract came about as a compromise between marriage and prostitution. Early in the existence of Spacers the starcorps discovered that policing the sexual practices of their long-lived inhabitants was problematic at best. This was because of their dependence on their resident shareholders as their workforce. In space, there was no way to commute employees in from outside of the starcorp. The last thing any starcorp wanted was for large numbers of its resident shareholders selling away their stock and relocating to a more socially agreeable starcorp. Pandering to the appetites of their workforce was a practice that all starcorps engaged in. None of them wanted to be the least desirable community to live in. Because of this competition between starcorps, changes in social norms were quick to be tested. What proved to be agreeable to the majority of the populace was adopted, and what proved disagreeable was discarded. Because of these broad changes in propriety, virtuous Earthers began to look upon the starcorps as havens for loose moral conduct. This was a popular indictment of the starcorps among Earthers.

Social contracting was born out of this trial and error method of social evolution. In effect, social contracts empowered any two or more individuals to devise a contract that restricted who they were permitted to be sexually intimate with. The overwhelming majority of these agreements incorporated regular payments by one or more of the signatories to one or more of the other signatories. There was only one fixed rule in the framework of a social contract, there could be no explicitly worded obligation requiring any signatory to have sex with anyone else. Despite this restriction, all knew that this was implicit in the contract because of the exchange of money. Financial penalties were levied against any signatory that broke faith with the contract, and early back-outs of a contract necessitated putting into effect monetary awards or penalties calculated at a pre-agreed upon scale. In effect, it behooved the payee to keep the payer happy, and it behooved the payers to cut their losses if they were not.

The original design purpose of the Social Contract was to circumnavigate the anti-prostitution law that was in existence when the starcorps were subject to Earth rule. Later, when Earth rule was no more, and the long lives of the Spacers began to over strain the institution of marriage, the starcorps legitimized the practice of social contracting. The Social Market evolved out of this act. The good looks of a spacer could earn him, or her, a considerable income. And the wealth of a spacer could garner him or her numerous lovers. For Benjamin, his participation in the Social Market quickly became financially lucrative and slowly became emotionally draining.

Over time, Benjamin became less enthralled with these detached relationships. He became hungry for the affections of more than one of these ladies that he contracted with and despondent when he did not get it. Shortly, he emotionally armored himself against this new reality. He willed himself not to become infatuated with any of the women that exploited him for sex. Over time, this defense created a void that begged to be filled. Daphne was the solution that filled this vacuum.

Benjamin was not looking for a relationship when he first saw Daphne. He had become accepting of the prospect that an ongoing romance with anyone would likely not happen soon. He also expected that the woman that filled this position would be several years older than Daphne. It is for these two reasons that he, initially, dismissed Daphne as a potential love interest. This perception changed within a time span of one week from the day he first saw her. Daphne’s beauty and her apparent affinity for him overwhelmed his concern about her age and caused him to entertain thoughts about sharing his life with hers.

“I wish I could move in,” Daphne mused as her head lay atop Benjamin’s chest. “I spend all my spare time here anyway.”

Daphne already knew what the reply to her pondering would be. This was a subject they had discussed before and resolved upon. Her remark was far more of a wish than a serious suggestion. Benjamin was aware of this distinction but chose to respond despite this.

“You don’t need that expense,” Benjamin whispered back with a soft shake of his head.

Both Benjamin and Daphne knew that her parents enjoyed some financial allowances for the care of their children. They were also aware that her parent’s allowance would be reduced if she formally changed her status to an independent resident. This change would subject Daphne to living expenses. To avoid this expense, she would have to make the move without reporting it to the starcorp. This act would make her, and her parents, vulnerable to fines and back charges once the starcorp discovered the truth. This was a risk that Daphne was neither willing to take or to ask her parents to take. By RG01 law, they were engaged in a misdemeanor offense already. Sexual relationships, without a contractual agreement, were prohibited. But this was a minor offense that carried a minor fine, and it would only apply to the two of them. This offense would be far greater if they were signatories to a social contract with a third party while engaging in prohibited sex. Benjamin and Daphne reasoned that it was better to keep things as they were. Daphne came to this conclusion with a significant amount of reluctance.

“So, how long do we do this?” Daphne whispered after a pause.

This was a subject that had never been discussed or decided upon. This was because both sides assumed that their relationship would be formalized when Daphne became an independent resident. She asked this question, at this moment, because of her concern that Benjamin and her father might be released from the project at different times. Daphne feared the prospect of being separated from Benjamin due to events outside of her control.

Benjamin did not share Daphne’s concern about this. He had surmised from the beginning that they would not soon be separated. He anticipated that this project would keep them both fixed in this location for several years to come. He did not discuss this with Daphne because the subject never came up before. And he gave little thought to it because it carried so little weight in his thoughts. It is for these reasons that he gave her query a casual response.

“For as long as it takes.”

“Yes, but what happens if you or my Dad get transferred back to DCT,” Daphne challenged softly?

Daphne had not seen or heard of this happening to anyone else. But she feared it would occur eventually.

“I doubt they’ll be sending your father back anytime soon. And I know I’m not going back for some time to come,” Benjamin reasoned out loud. 

Daphne pushed her upper body up off his chest, braced her right forearm against the bed and gave Benjamin a look of curiosity before questioning this with a surprised inflection.

“Why do you say that?”

It was generally understood by all that were living and working within RG01 that discussion about the work they were doing was discouraged by the governing authority. But all knew that this was unenforceable and most people there spoke on what they knew, in limited amounts, with their closest confidants. There was little fear that this practice would do them any harm. There were no reports of this happening before, and all believed that anything they said was not going to leave the Saturn System. Where security was lax about the exchange of information between individuals, it was stringent with regards to the transmission of it outside of RG01. All external communications went through an RG01 Security bottleneck. Everything going out of the planetary system was censored and redacted when necessary.

Benjamin and Daphne were small time offenders of this prohibition against the discussion of the business of RG01. This was primarily due to Daphne. She had little interest in the details of what was going on inside RG01. The consensus among the population was that they were engaged in a military buildup. This was all that she cared to know about what was happening. For Daphne, the details were irrelevant and boring. Benjamin understood this to be the case and gave no thought of bringing it up with her, until this moment. Her sudden interest in his connection to this project gave him reason to tell her what he knew.

“I’m going to be here long after this construction project is over,” Benjamin confessed hesitantly.

Daphne was perplexed by this report. She took a moment to sort out her confusion and then asked the question that this process produced.

“Why?”

Benjamin paused long enough to second guess his decision to tell her what he knew and then he proceeded to answer her question.

“I’ve been recruited into RG01’s fighter pilot program.”

“You’re going to be a fighter pilot,” Daphne echoed back with a shocked expression. “How? When?”

“They recruited me into the training program three months back,” Benjamin explained promptly in the hope of counteracting her dismay. “I accepted,” he confessed a second behind.

“So, you’re a soldier?” Daphne questioned with an inquisitive look.

“No,” Benjamin corrected with a slight shake of his head. “At the end of the training, I will be a licensed fighter pilot.”

“But after that, you’ll be a member of this military that they’re constructing?” A confused Daphne spoke with a questioning inflection.

Benjamin understood her confusion. He had only recently learned the mechanics of his association with this Space Force that was being put together. Had he been speaking to anyone other than her he would expect that person to know this. His mistake was in forgetting that he was speaking to Daphne. Benjamin promptly set himself to the task of clarifying his situation to her.

“Once I graduate, I will be qualified—temporarily, to hold a commission in the RG01 Space Force, but this is something that I can either accept or decline. It’s going to be an all voluntary military. Anyone that accepts the commission will instantly become RG01 shareholders, and anyone that reneges on their pledge of service will automatically forfeit their shares. Fines and penalties could be added on top of that if they abandon their post during an active conflict.”

Benjamin hesitated for effect and then added a final thought with an expression of excitement. “This is a whole new kind of military.”

Daphne had no response to this. Her mind was hard at work processing what she had just heard along with the level of excitement in the voice of its teller. Benjamin interpreted her silence as proof that she had no questions and picked up where he left off two seconds earlier.

“Shares will be divided out by rank and cumulative time on duty with a differential for non-hazardous, hazardous and extreme hazard duty. To hold on to my commission, I will need to start a one-year tour within ten years of my last tour, in either a reserve or active duty capacity. If I lose my commission, then I would have to go through the training again to get it back. And to bridge my seniority I would have to complete ninety days of active service for every year I was away.”

“But you won’t have to go to war,” Daphne challenged as though she was pointing out the obvious.

Benjamin noted the satisfaction Daphne derived from the idea that he could avoid being a participant in some future conflict. Upon seeing this, he concluded that she did not perceive his position on this subject. Once again, he set himself to the task of clarifying something for her.

“This is an opportunity,” Benjamin declared with a hint of excitement. “RG01 is going to be a new kind of starcorp. The other starcorps may own RG01’s equipment, but they don’t own the people that will be running it.”

Benjamin took a pause to see if Daphne comprehended what that meant. After noting her confusion, he continued with his explanation.

“They’re going to have to negotiate terms with RG01 just like any other starcorp. That means that there are no upper limits to the potential profits. This is a ground floor opportunity. Only a fool would back out of this program.”

Daphne did not know how to take this news at first. The knowledge that Benjamin would not be leaving RG01 anytime soon gave her comfort. But the prospect of him going into battle was equally unsettling. For the first time, she was eager to know the plans that the starcorps had for these weapons.

“But, we’re not really going to war with Earth, are we?” Daphne implored with a wide eye expression.

“I don’t know. We could,” Benjamin confessed with a shake of his head.

Daphne was made even more distressed by this answer. She pushed herself up into a seated position on the bed and looked upon Benjamin with an expression of extreme concern.

“You can’t go to war with Earth, Benjamin,” Daphne insisted sternly. “We have family down there. We have friends and people we know. How could you even think about doing something like that?”

“No one thinks that,” Benjamin countered quickly.

“What do you mean nobody? Who is nobody?”

“RG01 has been gathering pilots from out of every starcorp in the system. There are more than three hundred of us here.”

“Three hundred,” Daphne repeated with an astounded inflection.” What are they going to do with three hundred fighter pilots?”

“Daphne, relax,” Benjamin implored.

Benjamin paused from his response to give his plea time to take effect. Two seconds later he picked up from where he left off.

“Right now, we’re mostly doing nothing. We haven’t even seen our fighters yet.”

“I don’t understand… What are you doing?”

“Well, so far they’ve processed us into the training program. We’ve done some drilling, small arms training, some mental preparation training. We’ve watched an endless series of videos on codes of conduct—ethics—it just seems like a lot of busy work. Trust me, they’re not planning anything for the immediate future.”

Daphne took a moment to take all this in. At the end of this, she expressed her confusion about what he had just said with an undertone of hysterics.

“They can’t be building all of this just to have you sit around and do nothing. My Dad said that they’re building this giant basestar out there. That can’t be for nothing, Benjamin.”

“I don’t think they’re meant for offensive purposes,” Benjamin suggested in a whisper.

Benjamin reached out and took Daphne’s hand into his before speaking again.

“I’m sure they are there in case Earth attacks us.”

“Why would they do that?” Daphne continued with a hint of hysteria. “Earth doesn’t have a Space Force.”

“But it could, Daphne,” Benjamin earnestly returned an instant behind. “Earth is potentially the single greatest industrial power in the solar system. Once they get their act together the starcorps will be no match for it. They’ll be able to out-produce us in warplanes a hundred to one. And more importantly, they have the manpower to put in those warplanes. For every one of us, there are twenty-five-thousand-of-them. If Earth went on a war footing today, they could be attacking us within a year. We have to prepare for this, Daphne—We have to.”

Daphne took this information in with a gradually expanding sensation of terror. She had heard talk like this before, but in the past, she was not really listening. The idea that Benjamin could play a role in such a conflict brought her attention to a sharp focus. Her greatest concern at this moment was that Benjamin might be harmed if such a conflict came to pass.

“But you’re not going to fight, are you?” Daphne questioned with a hint of fear in her tone.

Benjamin hesitated to answer out of a reluctance to say what he suspected that Daphne feared to hear. In the end, he confessed his intention with an intonation of solemn regret.

“Daphne, I have to do this.”

Daphne did not wait for him to finish before countering with her objection. An expression of fear was on her face as she shook her head in disbelief.

“No, no, you can’t do this, Benjamin. You have to promise me that you will turn down the commission if it’s offered—Please—do it for me.”

Benjamin weighed this request against his feelings for the person staring at him with a pleading expression. After several seconds of this, he gave the only honest response that he could.

“I can’t make that promise. I’m sorry.”

Daphne continued to hold her stare for another few seconds. At the end of this, she leaned forward against Benjamin, rested her head against his chest and wrapped her arms around his waist. Shortly after situating herself into this embrace, she whispered the only thought that existed in her head.

“I can’t lose you.”

Benjamin returned her embrace with a hint of a smile before responding to her declaration.

“This is all preparation, Babe. Chances are it will never happen.” 

Daphne gave a moment of thought to this and then whispered out her thinking.

“If you’re staying, then I’m staying.”

“You can’t,” Benjamin disputed with a shake of his head.

“I’m staying.”


	13. Mix and Match

The box seats at the front of the stands and the first ten rows behind them were nearly filled when Daniel and Wendy arrived at the Dominion Arena. On the tennis court in the center of the arena were two players engaged in a fierce match. Their play had gone beyond its estimated time. Because of this, the seats reserved for the Beck family were still occupied. Daniel and Wendy, along with many others, took seats near the back of the arena and waited for the contest in play to come to an end. This came to pass a quarter of an hour later. The spectators for that event began abandoning their seats within minutes of this ending, each at their own pace. As they did this, the new arrivals began replacing them in the courtside box seats and the front rows of the stands. Daniel and Wendy were among this group.

The Dominion Arena seats that Daniel and Wendy took were situated at courtside in a fenced off box for six at the midline of the tennis court. Twenty minutes after acquiring these seats the arena was nearly a third of the way filled with spectators. This was not a normal gathering for a tennis match. What made this event special was the nature of the contest. This was one of the five days that the annual RG01 Tennis Tournament Championships were scheduled to play out. The Dominion Arena was the usual location for this event.

The RG01 Tennis Tournament was open to all its members. This consisted of the more than sixty-thousand people that were living aboard the starships Dominion, Oasis, Cambridge, Sonoma, and Amaterasu. The tournament was separated into five divisions, male singles and doubles, female singles and doubles, and mixed doubles. Each division was divided into three categories, adult, adolescent and preadolescent. This was the third year for the RG01 tournament, but they were a common practice throughout the starcorps. Games and contests were a popular pastime of spacers. It was a way of escaping the realization that they lived in a container adrift in space. It also provided the residents with a means of measuring their current state of vigor. A declining performance over multiple years was often perceived as a signal that it was time for a metabolic overhaul.

Daniel’s and Wendy’s presence in the stands had nothing to do with a love for the game and everything to do with their love for their son. Sawyer’s aptitude for sports was a relatively recent discovery for Daniel and Wendy. When they left Earth, Sawyer was four years younger. He was still in the early stages of learning how to use his body efficiently. When he did participate in a sport, he had little opportunity to showcase his athleticism. Organized sporting events were uncommon on Earth. He participated in pickup games in the parks and streets with the other kids, but these were unsupervised activities. They did little to showcase the athletic prowess of anyone in the community. It was the Beck’s arrival into the starcorp community that provided Sawyer with the means to display his athleticism.

On this day, Sawyer was scheduled to play in the adolescent male singles championship match. This division consisted of young men between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years of age. Sawyer had participated in one previous adolescent tournaments aboard the Starship Amundsen. He was fourteen then. His game was lauded as strong and impressive for someone so young. Despite this praise, he did not reach the championship match. He was now sixteen years of age.

Daniel and Wendy made special arrangements to be off work so that they could attend this match. Ever since learning of Sawyer’s proclivity for tennis they took an interest in all his tournament appearances. They were eager to see their children excel and Sawyer was the first to give them something to cheer about. Daphne was academically brilliant, but she was not driven to heights of excellence. Her preoccupation, since reaching adolescence, was more for social interactions and boys. Adam was smart on a genius level, but he was largely disinterested in academics. As his maturity developed so did his skill for discovering mischievous endeavors. Sawyer’s academic prowess was less impressive than Daphne’s and far more so to Adam’s. But his interest and aptitude for sports gave Daniel and Wendy something to become excited about.

It did not take long for the spectators to settle into their seats and for the umpires, the referee, the scorekeeper, the ball-kids and the players to begin strolling out onto the court. Daniel and Wendy noted Sawyer’s presence from the moment that he stepped out onto the arena floor. He found them in the stands a short time after that. He waved and they waved back. Shortly after this, Sawyer had made his way to his chair at one side of the court near the midline and began to make his preparations for the match. Nearly a minute later, his opponent took his seat on the opposite side and commenced to do the same.

The only thing that Daniel and Wendy knew about Sawyer’s opponent was that he was the defending champion and that his name was Joseph Hussmann. They visually measured him against their son and neither took from this a reason to be confident that Sawyer would win. They could see that he was taller, two years older and every bit as athletically built as Sawyer. They both rationalized in their minds that Sawyer had met, and defeated, others that looked to be equally physically fit. However, they could produce no rational to minimize the fact that he was the defending champ.

“Hi,” Daphne announced an instant ahead of stepping up to the entrance to the box of seats where her parents were situated.

Daniel and Wendy made quick turns of their heads to note her with surprised expressions.

“Hi,” Daniel and Wendy returned.

Their looks of surprise were quick to turn into smiles before changing once again into expressions of confusion. The tall, handsome man standing beside her was not the image of the plus one they were expecting.

“Mom, Dad, I want you to meet Benjamin,” Daphne introduced with a smile and nod in his direction.

“Benjamin Romano,” he was quick to add as he jutted his hand out towards Daniel.

Daniel shook his hand and greeted him with a look of curiosity. Wendy greeted him with a modest, “hi.” At the end of this, Daphne led the tall stranger into the box. She and he took seats behind Daniel and Wendy.

“So, are you two—classmates?” Daphne queried with an inquisitive inflection.

“We’re dating, Mom,” Daphne instructed decisively.

Daniel and Wendy noted this answer with glances towards each other. Their surprise was not in the fact that Daphne was dating. Their surprise was due to the age of the person she was dating. Daniel and Wendy still thought of their daughter as a little girl. They did not believe her to be mature enough for a relationship with an adult male. The fact that she was involved with a mature male had Wendy more than a little worried about her safety. Daniel was suspicious of Benjamin’s intentions.

“How long have you two been dating?” Daniel inquired in a slightly stern tone of voice.

“We’ve been dating ever since we got here, Dad,” Daphne confessed softly.

“And I’m just now finding this out,” Daniel challenged in a stronger voice an instant behind.

Daphne was hesitant to respond to this. She had been deliberately hiding her relationship with Benjamin for fear of this response. Up until this moment, this had been a discussion that she was inclined to avoid. It was only through Benjamin’s insistence that they came to this match together.

“We first met on the Amundsen,” Benjamin jumped in to explain. “We only started dating since our arrival here.”

“And you didn’t think to come by the apartment and introduce yourself,” Daniel challenged with a questioning inflection.

Daphne was quick to speak up here and deflect her father’s anger away from her boyfriend.

“Dad, I’m almost nineteen. I can date whoever I want.”

“You’re still a dependent in the home that I provide. I have a right to …”

Wendy had been quietly reading the intonation in the voices of all that were speaking. She had no desire to contribute anything to this discussion at this time. She was more disposed to weighing the passions in the voices of the others. She elected to intercede only after hearing the volume of her husband’s words go a little bit higher than she was comfortable with.

“The match is starting,” Wendy interjected before Daniel could finish his thought.

Daniel reluctantly settled back into his seat to watch the tennis match between his son and last year’s winner of the RG01’s adolescent male singles tennis tournament. Wendy and Benjamin followed his lead. In little more than a minute, the contest was in progress. Shortly into the competition, the Becks and Benjamin Romano were fully invested in its outcome. Their previous discussion had been effectively sidelined for another time.

The match between Sawyer and Joseph was a best of three set contest. Both players battled hard for each game. Daniel and Wendy watched with dread as Joseph won the first set by a score of six to three. This loss heightened their fear that their son would not win a championship this year. By the end of the second set, their hopes were buoyed by Sawyer’s seven to five win. Bolstered by this win, Daniel and Wendy, once again, dared to believe that Sawyer could win. They settled back into their seats and began their wait through the rest break for the next, and last, set to begin.

Daphne’s anxiety was not nearly as high as her parents’. She wanted her brother to win, but she had little emotional investment in either result. She was prepared to give him her congratulations or condolences, whichever was appropriate, and then go back to living her life. Half of her primary goal in attending the tournament had already been accomplished. She wanted her parents to meet Benjamin. Up until this moment, the tennis match was almost a distraction that was preventing her from finishing the task that she and Benjamin had set for themselves. A short time into the rest break she decided the moment was right to finish what they set out to do. She reasoned in her thoughts that the start of the third set would cut short an overtly angry response from her parents.

“Mom, Dad, Benjamin and I are getting married,” Daphne announced with a straight forward delivery.

Daniel and Wendy twisted about in their seats to look at their daughter with shocked expressions. She, in turn, presented a posture of defiance after taking Benjamin’s hand into hers. Benjamin was made uneasy by the abrupt admission and by the startled effect it had on Daphne’s parents.

“What?” Wendy queried with a stunned expression.

“We’re getting married,” Daphne repeated unabashedly.

Wendy continued to look upon her daughter with wide-eyed amazement. Daniel looked back and forth between his daughter and Benjamin with an expression that was a mixture of confusion and anger.

“Mr. Beck, I love your daughter and I want to marry her,” Benjamin declared defensively a few seconds behind Wendy’s report.

“Married,” Daniel challenged with a stern look at Daphne.

“Yes Daddy,” Daphne confirmed with waning resolve.

Daniel took a moment to fume over this response. Wendy used, this time, to make an appeal to her daughter.

“Honey, have you thought about this? You’re still in school.”

“We don’t plan to marry right away,” Benjamin began to explain an instant behind Wendy’s retort. “But we are planning to marry when you transfer back to DCT, Mr. Beck.”

“We don’t want to be separated,” Daphne added to Benjamin’s explanation an instant behind.

Daniel took some relief from the fact that they did not intend on marry right away. He was also relieved to know that this tall, handsome, mature man wanted to marry his daughter. It made him feel better about him. What was causing him the most unease with their plan was the idea that it would break up his family. Daniel was reluctant to lose the daughter that he still perceived to be a little girl, despite her nineteen years. Because of her age, he knew that Daphne did not need his consent. After a short time, he reconciled with the reality that this was her decision to make. He then set his mind to the task of finding arguments to challenge her thinking.

“When my work is completed with this project you’ll likely have anywhere from one to three years of school left to complete,” Daniel reasoned out loud. “As our dependent your tuition is covered by the contract we signed with DCT. I don’t think this is a smart move for either of you,” he finished with a look to Benjamin.

“We’ll be separated if we don’t marry while we’re here,” Daphne insisted with a pleading inflection.

“But that can’t be for long,” Wendy quickly asserted to Daphne. “You can continue to date on DCT and…”

“No Mom,” Daphne interrupted with a shake of her head. “You don’t understand.”

“What don’t I understand,” Wendy questioned with a confused expression on her face.

“I’m not coming back to DCT anytime soon,” Benjamin explained softly.

“Why not?” Daniel asked with a stern look to Benjamin.

Benjamin hesitated to consider how Daniel and Wendy would take the news he was about to tell them. For a moment, he considered the possibility that they might become more averse to their marriage, and then he told them.

“RG01 has been recruiting pilots for a space force that they are developing. Six months ago, I signed on as a fighter pilot.”

Daniel began processing this information with stoic silence. He immediately understood that they had given a lot of thought to their situation and came to this decision after careful consideration. Intellectually he could find no flaw in the logic of their thinking, but physically he was finding this to be a hard pill to take. Dread swelled up inside of him. It was fomented by the knowledge that his little girl might be separated from him across millions of miles of space. Still, he had no response to give to this. He could only stare into his daughter’s eyes as he considered this possibility.

“Time,” the umpire shouted for all in the arena to hear.

Daniel had no reaction to this. He continued to hold a plaintive gaze upon his daughter and she returned it in kind.

“Honey, you can’t do this,” Wendy, mournfully, insisted after a moment of thought.

“I’m staying with Benjamin, Mom,” Daphne replied an instant behind.

Wendy took a moment to note the resolve in her daughter’s voice and manner. At the end of this time, she looked to her husband for some sign that he would back her in this appeal. Daniel, in turn, shook his head as if to say he had nothing and then offered a suggestion at near to a whisper.

“No one is going anywhere for at least another year. We can talk about it later.”

The Becks and Benjamin turned their attentions back towards the court and the third set that was commencing. For Daniel and Wendy holding their attention onto the contest was a difficult task. For nearly the whole of the set, their thoughts would wander back to their daughter every few minutes. This alternating back and forth went on until the tiebreaker began. From the moment that this period started, Sawyer had his parent’s full attention.

The tiebreaker game between Sawyer and Joseph went back and forth for a half-hour with no clear indication which player was closing in on the win. Daniel and Wendy followed each serve and volley with bated breaths. At the end of this half-hour, an opportunity emerged for Sawyer to win the match. Wendy reached out with nervous anticipation and grasped her husband’s hand. With one final serve and four successive returns, Sawyer clinched the match to the astonishment of his parents. They jumped to their feet and roared with excitement. The sound of their acclamation was lost within the din of the cheers of the crowd.

“He won,” Wendy exclaimed as she threw her arms around her husband and embraced him.

“Yes, he did,” Daniel countered excitedly.

The two of them embraced each other with large grins spread across their faces. Daphne and Benjamin shared in this excitement to a lesser extent. After another minute of cheering from the spectators, the ceremonial presentation began. Beneath the gaze of proud parents and the cheers of onlookers, Sawyer took the championship cup and held it up over his head. After another few minutes of applause, the crowds began to switch out for the next tournament game. Daniel, Wendy, Daphne and Benjamin were among the spectators leaving.


	14. Winner Takes All

Sawyer had just walked out of the locker-room and down the hall that lead to them when he saw Sharon, much to his surprise. What he noted in her presence there that was a surprise was the absence of her entourage of friends. Sawyer knew that Joseph had already dressed and left in a huff several minutes earlier. At first, he could not imagine what was keeping her there, all alone. An instant later he noted that she was looking at him. A second after this, she started to walk towards him with a mischievous smile on her face. She stopped inches away from him while holding this expression, and then she said her first word.

“Congratulations,” Sharon whispered into Sawyer’s face.

“Thanks,” Sawyer returned from behind a bashful shrug.

Sawyer won the RG01 adolescent male singles tennis tournament championship an hour earlier. He emerged from the locker-room newly showered and dressed in street clothes. His tennis bag was gripped in one hand and his championship trophy cup was in the other.

“That was a great game,” Sharon gushed. “I didn’t know you were such a gifted tennis player.”

Sawyer frantically searched his mind for a response before fumbling out a haphazardly contrived, “ah, I-I’m okay.”

“And modest,” Sharon countered with a large smile.

Sawyer could think of no immediate response for this. Sharon’s close proximity to him and the intimacy that was suggestive in her manner kept him too discombobulated in his thinking to produce a retort.

“That’s okay, I like modest men,” Sharon professed with an amused expression.

This too was something that Sawyer did not know how to respond to. His only reaction was to give a modest smile and nod in the affirmative. At the end of this, he said the only the thing he thought appropriate for this situation.

“Joseph left about ten minutes-ago. You probably just missed…”

“I already saw him,” Sharon interjected with a smile. “He was really in a bad mood. I didn’t know he was such a bad loser.”

Sharon took on a shocked expression as she spoke the next words.

“Do you know he broke up with me?”

“Oh, I didn’t know,” Sawyer confessed with a slightly stunned look.

Sharon gave no thought to the remark and continued with the topic with a slightly exasperated demeanor.

“He’s going to feel sorry about that tomorrow. He always does. And then he’s going to offer to make up, but I don’t know if I will this time.” She then took on a stunned expression as she spoke the last remark, “You know, I never thought he would be such a bad loser.”

Sawyer had a mixed reaction to this report. The fact that Sharon was no longer in a relation with Joseph excited him. He could not help but entertain thoughts about him and her. At the same time, he was experiencing a sensation of fear. He did not know how he should proceed. He did not know what he should say or how he should react. In the end, he said the only thing he thought was an appropriate response to Sharon’s revelation.

“I’m sorry,” Sawyer whispered with a slight shake of his head.

“Oh, that’s alright,” Sharon returned with an upbeat demeanor. “Besides, it was bound to happen sooner or later. It’s not like we were going to get married someday.”

Sharon’s manner transitioned to coquettish. She inched in a little closer and broadened her smile as she spoke her next remark.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll find someone new that I like.”

Sawyer was flushed by this new familiarity towards him from Sharon. His breath caught in his throat as he pondered what response he should give. In the end, he chose to ask a question.

“So, you’re not here to see Joseph?”

“I’m here to see you,” Sharon reported with a tilt of her head and with the beginnings of a grin on her face.

“You wanted to see me?” Sawyer questioned with a surprised inflection.

“I wanted to congratulate you,” Sharon declared flirtatiously. “You were brilliant out there. I was so impressed.”

Sawyer had no immediate response to this. His mind was too befuddled by the fact that Sharon was there to see him. While his mind was pondering what he should say, Sharon introduced a new topic of converse.

“So, are you going to the banquet?”

“The banquet?” Sawyer spoke with a questioning inflection.

In most starcorps, two championship tournament seasons were scheduled annually. They were carried out during four-week periods. All organized sporting events scheduled their regular seasons to culminate into one of these tournament periods. The sports that were most common throughout the starcorp community were soccer, baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf, volleyball, bowling, cricket and table tennis. The championship games for these sports would be divided between these two tournament seasons. The winners of these tournaments were given a banquet and heralded throughout the starcorp.

Sawyer gave little thought to this bi-annual banquet for the recent tournament winners. He understood this ceremony to be, essentially, a dinner given by the Executive Heads of the starcorp. The audience consisted of high-ranking officials, VIP’s and tournament winners. Admission was by invitation only. The winners had the option of being accompanied by a date and/or their family. Virtually all starcorp members thought of these banquets as gala affairs. The banquets were always combined with theatrical and musical performances from the local entertainment community.

In some ways, these banquets were events for the entertainers more so than the athletes. It was their opportunity to showcase their talents before an illustrious live audience and to have their performances televised throughout the starcorp. To be invited to perform before this assembly was a victory for them. This entertainment portion of the banquet was a common practice in all starcorps.

It was customary for the winners of these sports to attend these ceremonial banquets, and it was uncommon for one to forgo it. The event was being staged in their behalf. A ranking official of the starcorp would hand out engraved plaques to the Champions to commemorate their wins. Sawyer had, up until then, given no thought to the banquet. In his mind it was simply a consequence of winning.

“Yes, the banquet,” Sharon enthusiastically retorted. “You have to go. It’s great. You’ll love it.”

“Oh yeah, I haven’t really thought about that,” Sawyer confessed with a slight shake of his head.

“Well, if you do go take someone with you. You’ll enjoy it that much more,” Sharon advised with a pleasant smile.

Sawyer considered this suggestion for a second before giving his response.

“Well, if I go it’ll probably be with my parents.”

“Oh no,” Sharon exclaimed with a look of shock on her face. “You have to take a date, silly.”

Sawyer gave this a moment of thought with a perplexed expression and a slight shake of his head. At the end of this, he mumbled out the thought that was causing this reflection.

“I don’t know who I would take.”

“You’re a tennis champion,” Sharon returned with near to a grin on her face. “And you’re good looking,” she continued. “You’re very good looking,” Sharon emphasized in a softer tone. “All you have to do is ask someone. I’m sure she would be happy to go with you,” she finished with an affectionate stare.

At that moment, Sawyer had little doubt that Sharon was fishing for an invite, but this did not diminish his desire for her. The only thing having any effect on his thinking at that moment was his desperate need to please her.

“Would you go with me?” Sawyer uttered with nearly no thought behind the question.

“Me,” Sharon retorted with a smile and a pretense of surprise. “You want me to go with you to the banquet?”

“Yes,” Sawyer whispered back with a slight nod of his head.

“Sure,” Sharon returned with feigned sincerity. “I would love to go to the banquet with you, Sawyer.”

Sharon blushed and giggled for another three minutes as she exchanged communication addresses with Sawyer. She thanked him with excessive gratitude. She complimented him and professed that she had never been more touched by an invite. She then hurried off for home while flagging waves and flashing smiles behind her.

Sawyer emerged from the arena amidst cheers, applause and congratulations from family and friends. Wendy rushed to embrace him. Daniel followed in turn. Oscar, Martin, and Anthony crowded about after this and offered him handshakes and pats on the back as they congratulated him. Rebecca and CC stood behind the boys and added their congratulations to the mix. It took nearly two minutes for the celebratory excitement to die down enough for any meaningful converse to take place.

“We have to celebrate this,” Daniel announced joyfully. “I reserved a couple of tables at Donovan’s. Everybody is welcome.”

All present agreed to this and promptly set off for Donovan’s Restaurant. The Becks, minus Adam and accompanied by Benjamin, Oscar, Anthony, Rebecca, Martin, and CC, took up seats around two six position tables that were positioned together, end to end. Over the next hour they ate, laughed and enjoyed themselves near to excess. At the end of this time, Daphne brought up a subject that had been, up until then, overlooked.

“So, do you know what you’re going to wear to the banquet, Mom?”

Wendy had given no thought to the banquet and was promptly frightened by the idea that she might get an invite.

“Oh, I’m not going to the banquet,” Wendy insisted with a slight shake of her head. “That’s for Sawyer.”

“Yes, you are, Mom,” Daphne insisted with a large grin. “Sawyer is an adolescent. Parents always get invites to these things.”

Benjamin was quick to agree with Daphne by nodding his head and exclaiming, “That’s automatic.”

“You’re going, Dad, aren’t you?” Daphne questioned with a large smile.

“Not without your mother,” Daniel retorted with a look that said he was not going to contradict Wendy.

“You see, Mom, you have to go,” Daphne asserted excitedly.

Wendy examined Daniel as he gave his answer and then blushed away from it. After a moment of thought, she looked to Sawyer with a smile on her face.

“What do you say? Do you think we should go?”

“Yes, I suppose,” Sawyer responded hesitantly.

“Are you sure we wouldn’t be crowding you and your—date?” Wendy countered with a sly smile and a furtive glance towards CC.

Oscar supported this thinking with a resounding, “Yeah.”

Rebecca supported it with a look towards CC and a smile.

Daphne had no knowledge of what the others were thinking and reacted to her mother’s excuse for not going with a decidedly snide contradiction.

“What date? Sawyer doesn’t have a girlfriend. Who are you going to crowd?”

Wendy ignored the cynicism in her daughter’s question and gave her no attention as she spoke her response.

“Sawyer can always ask someone,” Wendy sweetly suggested with a smile towards her son. “Maybe even someone at this table,” she finished with a look towards CC.

Oscar, Anthony, Rebecca, Martin and CC became close acquaintances of the Becks shortly after their arrival aboard the Amaterasu. Led by Oscar’s and Anthony’s effervescent personalities they were frequently in and out of the Beck family home. This familiarity was not an unwelcome to Daniel and Wendy. They took delight from the fact that their son had established a close friendship with kids that they had taken a liking to. This casual affinity they had for Sawyer’s friends was equally true for all except CC. Wendy took a special liking for the cute young girl with the cheerful disposition. CC’s personality played some part in this extra affinity, but it was her clear infatuation with Sawyer that raised her high in Wendy’s regard.

Wendy and Rebecca were the only two people that managed to peel away CC’s disguise of indifference towards Sawyer and note the depth of her feelings for him. Rebecca supported this by matching the two of them together whenever possible. Wendy had always been inclined to allow their relationship to steer its own course. She had her suspicion that there was another girl, unknown to her, that dominated her son’s attention. This was the only explanation she had for her son’s inattention to sweet CC. Her reason for pushing them together now was because her son needed a date.

“Yeah dude,” Anthony spoke up enthusiastically. “I’m sure CC would be happy to be your date. Won’t you CC?”

CC feigned indifference to the idea with a slightly perceptible upward tilt of her head. She then responded to the query with an indifferent expression.

“I suppose, but I have to be asked first.”

At the end of this response, all eyes turned to Sawyer and for a brief time his person froze. Internally his mind was engaged in a rapid search for an artful way of negotiating this situation. He needed no one to tell him that CC would likely accept his request that she attend the banquet with him. He had little doubt of this while he was submitting his offer to Sharon. Sawyer’s affinity for CC made him reluctant to hurt her, but his desire for Sharon gave him no way to avoid it.

“Sawyer…?” Wendy spoke up into the silence that had descended over the table.

Sawyer turned his attention towards his mother before speaking the words he needed to say.

“I’ve already asked someone,” Sawyer reported in a cheerless voice.

This news took everyone by surprise. No one considered the possibility that he might ask someone else let alone have the time to do it. Except for Oscar, all were shocked into silence.

“Way to go, Dude,” Oscar blurted out. “Who did you ask?”

Sawyer displayed some reluctance to answer this question. He knew that Sharon was disliked by both CC and Rebecca, and he was loath to incur their displeasure. Despite this feeling, he took note that all were waiting for his answer, and he forced himself to give it.

“I asked Sharon,” Sawyer announced softly. “And she said yes.”

“Sharon Stewart?” Anthony queried with unchecked excitement.

“Way to go, Sawyer,” Oscar announced supportively. “Joseph is really going to be angry when he finds out about that.”

“Who is Sharon Stewart?” Wendy questioned to anyone with an answer.

“She’s the most popular girl in school,” Anthony responded with a large smile on his face.

“She’s hot,” Oscar, emphasized an instant behind.

“Yeah, she’s really good looking,” Martin endorsed with a look towards Wendy.

Daniel took some pleasure in hearing about his son’s apparent popularity among members of the opposite sex. He held a constrained smile as he looked proudly at him. Wendy, however, did not share her husband’s approval of this. She could not help but note Rebecca’s cool reaction and CC’s barely restrained expression of dejection. She suspected that their opinion of Sharon was quite different then their male friends and that they were both reluctant to say this aloud.

“I’m sorry, CC,” Sawyer expressed with a stare. “I would have asked you if I hadn’t already asked Sharon.”

CC was quick to deflect this as if it was neither here nor there.

“Oh fine, this saves me from the trouble of having to bail you out.”

This response generated chuckles from around the conjoined tables. No sooner had this mirth died down did CC jump up and announce that she had to leave. Rebecca offered to go with her, but CC declined the company. She insisted that her parents were expecting her. One minute after this declaration she was out of the restaurant and on her way home, choking back tears as she went. No one at the table misunderstood the emotion that prompted her sudden exit, but only Rebecca comprehended its extent.


	15. The Other Son

“This way,” Adam beckoned with a wave of his hand.

Adam, along with three of his closest friends, had just recently penetrated the lower levels of the Starship Amaterasu. This was no small accomplishment, even for an adult schooled in the science of computers and electronics. However, for fifteen-year-old Adam Beck, it was a challenge that he could not resist.

Getting past the doors that blocked the passages to the lower levels was the easiest part of getting past the starship’s security. These entryways were not designed with maximum security in mind. These areas had to be accessible enough for the ship’s maintenance crew to quickly get into on a regular basis. Compared to the security systems guarding the hatches to Engineering and the Command and Control sectors of the starship these doors were practically unlocked. The most challenging part of penetrating into the sub-levels of the starship was fooling the sensors. It was common for the location of everyone aboard a spacecraft to be continuously monitored. And certain areas aboard all spaceships were off limits to anyone without the proper security clearance. This was no different aboard the Amaterasu. Adam and his friends had no clearance beyond the residential levels. To enter any other part of the ship was supposed to trigger an alert in the ship’s Security Center.

Procuring the security clearances necessary to move about in the depths of the starship was no small feat. The ship’s mainframe computer maintained a vigilant watch over all corridors of the vessel. Fooling the computer was the only way to enter a forbidden area without setting off an alarm. This Adam did ahead of their descent. To the mainframe, he and his friends were Transport Systems Technicians moving about in the catacombs of the starship.

Adam devoted little effort to his school studies, and he regularly ditched classes for more entertaining pursuits. His high IQ did nothing to excite his enthusiasm for academia. Despite this disregard for his studies, he had sailed far ahead of his peers scholastically. Several of the classes he was attending were collegiate level courses. He had been classified as a mathematical genius three years earlier. He was deemed above average in all other courses, but most believed this was because he put little effort into them. School was not a challenge for Adam. What did hold his intrigue were computers.

In his thirteenth year of growth, Adam was writing complex computer code to the amazement and occasionally to the annoyance of his parents. In the past, these programs had no effect on the ship’s mainframe and the databases that it interfaced with. As a practice, Adam restricted his mischievous activities to private sector systems. His latest program was the first departure from that rule. This he did almost by accident. While exploring the Amaterasu data network, he discovered an encrypted backdoor portal to the maintenance employees’ database. For Adam, the challenge of hacking into it was almost irresistible. After more than a month of trying, he managed to do just that. It was his need for gratification that compelled him to make use of this accomplishment. Without a second thought, he listed his three friends and himself into the database.

Daniel and Wendy were accustomed to getting reports about their youngest child’s mischievous activities. As he grew older, his intellect, increasingly, became the mechanism that created the trouble he got into. The CED administration advised Daniel and Wendy to find a constructive outlet for Adam’s genius. They feared that boredom coupled with his abundance of energy would get him into trouble someday. Daniel and Wendy gave little time or thought to this suggestion. Up until this moment, Adam had done nothing of large significance to warrant any great concern. Daniel and Wendy were supremely proud of their youngest child’s extraordinary intellect. To all else they were blind, for the most part.

“Come on,” Adam encouraged as he hurried down a grated walkway.

The swooshing of transport pods could be heard rushing by in the distance from where Adam and his friends were located. They were four levels beneath the Promenade. A dimly lit lattice of walkways, piping, conduits, stairs and ladders all worked together to configure an elaborate, three-dimensional labyrinth that ran along the boundary of the habitat’s circumference. So complex were the sub levels that small signs with three-character location identification codes were employed at every junction. They were used to help guide the technicians to where they were going. Adam gave no thought to these signs. His destination was any area that he found intriguing enough to explore. They all understood that their way out was up.

“Where are you going, Adam?” Rick Marshall inquired as he followed a step behind.

“I just want to see what’s down this way,” Adam returned without a break in his pace.

Rick was Adam’s closest and longest friend aboard the Amaterasu. They shared a need for adventure and a propensity for getting into trouble. He and Adam were the same age. Rick, however, was not the academic equal of Adam, but this was understandable. There was only a minority of people that passed through the educational systems of the starcorps that were the equal of Adam’s intellect. Rick’s deficiency in this area was in one respect his saving grace. He lacked the technical expertise to tamper with electronic systems. This kept him slightly below the radar of CED Administration. To the school personnel that kept track of juvenile mischief, he was noted as a friend of Adam and little else.

The two other friends of Adam that were sharing this adventure with him were thirteen-year-old Eric Pearce and Fourteen-year-old Jaime Logan. Both were connected to this group by a need to share in the escapades that Adam and Rick had a talent for. They followed along willingly, but they contributed little to the endeavors that they participated in. Adam and Rick were always at the lead of their adventures. They fed off each other’s hunger for diversion, often competing to be the more daring of the two.

“The transport tubes are down that way,” Jaime warned with a hint of concern in his voice.

Jaime was not telling Adam anything he did not already know. The sound of the pods swooshing by was the allure that was guiding him. Rick noted this compulsion a moment earlier and promptly directed his thinking towards the prospect of exploring the tubes. He and Adam were soon in a race to lead the way. The sound of the transport pods rushing by grew noticeably louder with every five yards they traversed. It took them less than a minute to reach the outer boundary of the transport tubes and the door that barred their entry.

Security clearance was needed to unlock the door. This was no problem for Adam. He touched his com-link bracelet to the door’s control panel. The image of a numerical keypad appeared in the panel’s display. After keying in his passcode, the door unlocked. The red light on the door’s control panel turned green at that same instant. A second later the door slid open and Adam led his three friends through the portal.

“Way to go,” Rick promptly acknowledged as he followed through the doorway.

This portion of the transport tube was a thirty-yard-wide corridor on lower level four. The passageway was fifteen feet high and it extended all the way around the starship. The pods were propelled along magnetic fields generated between the ceiling and the floor. Large circular vertical shafts could be found at distant intervals fixed within the side walls. They were always situated in pairs, one for going up and the other for going down. From here, the down tubes led to the parking garage, one level down. The up tubes led to the upper levels and to the hub of the starship. A four-foot-wide railed catwalk extended along either side of the corridor and ended at the vertical tubes. Maintenance doors provided entrance onto the catwalks at either end.

Adam and his compatriots were transfixed by the sight of transport pods gliding back and forth at rapid speeds. Each of them had been in the interior of one of these spherical, hollow, balls on hundreds of occasions. It was the sight of them racing down the passageway that held their fascination at this moment. Their amazement held for more than a minute. At the end of this time, they began to move down the catwalk and away from the door that they came through.

Time and again, as the four explorers moved down the walkway, they were buffeted backward and forward by the wind generated by the fast-moving spheres. The pods traveled down six separate lanes. The three lanes on the near side of the corridor moved all pods from left to right. The three lanes on the far side of the corridor moved the pods in the opposing direction. The center two lanes were the ones most frequently used. The spheres in them often went by in strings of two, three, four, five and six. The lanes to either side of the two center lanes were used less often, and the pods within them moved at a slightly slower speed. The outside lanes were infrequently used and moved decidedly slower to the pods to their lefts. They were always slowing for entry into the next vertical tube or accelerating to merge into the lane to its left.

After another three minutes of walking, Adam and his friends came across a pair of vertical transport tubes. The walkway they were on came to a stop there. An exit door for the transport corridor was situated there. Adam ignored it and stopped to look out across the passageway. Eric and Jaime were puzzled by his decision to stop, and they exhibited this with perplexed expressions. Rick was quick to note where Adam’s attention was focused and promptly began to grin in reaction to this awareness. He instinctively knew that Adam was thinking about crossing the corridor to the walkway on the other side.

“I dare you,” Rick coaxed with an amused expression.

Adam was quick to pick up this challenge. After pausing to give Rick an audacious smile he climbed over the waist high walkway railing. Eric and Jaime watched him do this with shocked expressions. They both had their doubts that Adam could cross the corridor without being struck by one of the pods. And they were quick to tell him so.

“Come on, Adam, stop playing around,” Jaime instructed with more than a hint of concern in his tone.

“It can’t be done,” Eric insisted an instant behind.

Rick’s take upon this act was very much the opposite of his two friends. He believed it could be done. Just the same, he shared Jaime’s and Eric’s hope that Adam would not try, but this was only because he wanted to do it first.

“You better time it right,” Rick warned with a mischievous smile. “If you get hit by one of those pods it’s going to hurt, a lot.”

Adam acknowledged this warning with a look and a smile. He then turned his attention back to the transport pods racing by in front of him. He began timing their movements and estimating his own against the space of time between the pods. Every other second, he would switch his gaze from one direction to the other and back again. After more than a minute of this, he leaned out towards the corridor.

“Don’t do it, Adam,” Jaime implored with a wide-eyed expression.

Adam gave no thought to his plea and continued to switch his attention back and forth at the oncoming pods. There was a one-foot drop down to the transport pod corridor. Adam stood on the ledge, holding on to the railing, as he made his final calculations. Half a dozen seconds later he made his leap onto the corridor floor. With three long strides, he raced across the first lane and into the second. He hesitated there for a second with a wide-eyed look of dread. He gauged the approach of the transport pods to his left, and those crossing his path in the third and fourth lanes. The pod in the fourth lane was coming from his right. Shortly into this calculation, he raced across the third and fourth lanes and came to a stop in the fifth. It took little more than a second for three pods in the fourth lane to pass behind him. An instant behind that he raced back into the fourth lane in time to let two pods go by in the fifth and one in the sixth. A second after stopping, he raced back to the second lane to evade pods crisscrossing in the third and fourth lanes. He quickly panted away two breathes as three transport pods whisked by in front of him. As he did this, his head turned left and right six times so that he could estimate the transit time of each new pod that came into view. With his third breath, Adam raced across the third lane an instant ahead of a pod passing through and came to a halt in the fourth. His sudden stop saved him from colliding with two pods going by in the fifth lane. Within a second’s time, Adam assessed that he needed to vacate the fifth lane and avoid the sixth and fourth lanes. Amid the shouts of warnings from his friends, he spun about and raced back into the third lane in time to evade pods rushing by in lanes four, five and six. No sooner had he done this did his friends begin to scream at him to watch out for a transport pod racing towards him. Adam had already factored its approach into his decision to stop there. With a look of heightened apprehension across his face, he lingered in the third lane for as long as he dared. At the last instant, he raced across the newly cleared fourth and fifth lanes and into the sixth. Without a pause, he jumped up onto the ledge on the far side of the corridor and leaped over the railing to the walkway on the other side.

The moment that Adam had both feet planted on the walkway he turned about and stretched out his arms in a triumphant gesture. He held that posture for three seconds as he flashed a smile back at his three friends. At the end of this time, he crossed his arms and gave Rick a smug look of satisfaction.

“Okay, my turn,” Rick shouted across the corridor with no hesitation.

Rick was eager to duplicate Adam’s accomplishment and was confident that he could so. This was not entirely cockiness on his part. He was every bit the daredevil that Adam was and decidedly more adept at physical activities. He promptly climbed over the railing and began gauging the flow of transport pods for the right moment to start his crossing.

“Don’t do it, Rick,” Eric urged with a nervous shake of his head.

Rick gave no thought to Eric’s entreaty and continued to make his preparation to cross the passageway. Thirty seconds into this wait, he commenced his dash. In little more than half the time that it took Adam, and with one less back step, he reached the other side. No sooner had he scaled the railing did Adam begin to applaud his friend with several claps of his hands. His face was nearly stretched into a grin as he did this. Rick was equally pleased with himself.

“Okay, who’s next,” Rick called out towards Jaime and Eric.

“No way,” Eric responded with a shocked expression and a shake of his head. “I’m not doing that.”

“You guys are crazy,” Jaime yelled out a second behind and with a large smile on his face.

“Come on, it’s easy,” Adam grinned back as he beckoned with his hand.

Eric was decidedly averse to attempting the crossing and showed as much with a step backward. He flagged both hands into a negative gesture and shook his head as he spoke his response.

“No way…”

Eric was the least adventurous of the four of them. He was often the last to try something new, and he was the one that was most likely to not try at all. Daredevil activities were not in his nature. Adam’s and Rick’s proclivity for dangerous acts was not the characteristic that attracted them to him. His association with Adam and Rick was based, primarily, on age and proximity. The number of juveniles in most starships rarely reached ten percent of its population. Eric did not have many choices for friends that were a comfortable fit for his age. His close association with Jaime was a major reason for his friendship with them. Jaime was well liked by Adam and Rick. His company was sought out regularly.

Jaime was much more likely to follow Adam’s and Rick’s lead. He was not as mischievous as they, but there was nothing that they would do that he would not try if challenged. His pride would not permit him to be perceived as the lesser of his friends. This was a condition that was coming into play at that moment.

“Come on, Jaime,” Eric beseeched after noting that his friend was yielding to Rick’s and Adam’s dare. “You’re not going to do it?”

Jaime’s only response to this was a shrug that suggested he felt compelled to try. After this, he began to scale the railing. Adam and Rick cheered Jaime on as he positioned himself to make his dash across the corridor. After more than a minute of contemplation, he made his leap to the corridor floor. His three friends watched with expressions of amusement, excitement and dread. The dread was on Eric’s part, and the amusement belonged to Adam. His delight was heightened with each close encounter that Jaime had. Rick and Eric yelled out warnings and directions as Jaime zigzagged back and forth across the floor. Shortly past thirty seconds of dodging Jaime was conflicted by the near simultaneous approach of nine transport pods. Two of the pods were approaching him in the fourth lane. Three were approaching his path in the third lane. Four more pods were approaching his path in the first, second, fifth and sixth lanes. Jaime did not know which way he should go. Rick and Eric yelled out conflicting instructions. After a moment of hesitation, Jaime concluded that he had no way out. In that instant, he closed his eyes and braced himself for the impact that he expected to receive, and then there was nothing. Jaime opened his eyes a second later in response to the sound of Adam laughing with reckless abandon. Despite this, his first thought was to look towards the two pods that had been racing towards him. At that moment, he noted, to his surprise, that the pods had stopped three feet away from him.

“What happened?” Eric called out to Adam from across the corridor.

Adam gave no response to this question. He allowed all to watch without distraction, as the pods moved to the next lane over at their earliest convenience, one after the other. After doing this, they continued on their way.

“You knew,” Jaime shouted at Adam after a quick turn of his head in his direction.

Adam was all the more amused by Jaime’s fierce reaction. His laughter increased in intensity for a few seconds more, and then he gave his response.

“Yeah,” Adam yelled out with a large grin on his face. “How crazy do you think I am?”

Rick had no knowledge that this would happen. His initial expression was one of surprise. He quickly discerned what had happened and joined in on Adam’s mirth.

“The pods have proximity sensors,” Adam explained with a large smile.

Both Jaime and Eric took this information with reluctant smiles. Jaime shook his head in reaction to his thought that he should have known. Eric quickly put his thoughts into words.

“You dick!”

This remark engendered more laughter from Adam and Rick. After several seconds of fretting Jaime and Eric joined in on the guffaw. Their mirth went on for another fifteen seconds. During this time, Jaime walked across the corridor without regard for any oncoming pods. Shortly after he climbed over the railing, and onto the catwalk, Eric crossed the corridor in a similar manner. The pods either stopped or evaded him as he made his way to the other side.

It did not take long for Rick to conclude that they could find nothing more entertaining on the lower levels than this. Adam was quick to agree. Jaime and Eric shortly followed their lead. Together they spent the next hour testing themselves against the onrushing transport pods and each other. They kept a count of the times each of them caused a pod to stop. The accepted goal of the play was to tally the fewest disruptions in the movements of the pods. At the back end of this time, Rick held the smallest count with four. Adam followed him with six. Jaime was in third place with a total of seven stops, and Eric came in last with nine. Their amusement with this game was still in full bloom when these numbers were tallied. This was the count when something unexpected brought their sport to a halt.

“Stop what you’re doing,” a deep voice boomed from down the corridor.

Adam and his friends came to a sudden standstill in response to this command. They quickly looked about them and counted a total of seven men approaching their location from both ends of the corridor and from either side of it. Three of them were maintenance workers, and the other four were security officers. Adam and his friends saw no recourse but to concede to their inevitable detention and waited for this to happen. The security officers took them into their custody in short order. They promptly pulled their identifications from the ship’s personnel database and listed their malfeasance onto their records. All this they did within the first ten minutes of contact. At the end of this time, they escorted the four juveniles to the Amaterasu Security Center and commenced to question them for the particulars of their circumvention of the starship’s security system.

Hacking into the security system of a starship was a serious offense regardless of the starcorp it belonged to. The prospect of being expelled from the community was nearly a mandatory punishment for an adult that perpetrated such an act. The only considerations that had the potential of lessening the punishment were the intent, the target and the age of the offender. Luckily for Adam and his friends they met the conditions for all three considerations. The target of their security breach was not considered a sensitive area. The intent behind their actions was deemed to be little more than a mischievous act, and their young age supported this assessment. Their parent’s records also worked in their favor. It was for these reasons that the Amaterasu Prosecutor’s Office decided to forgo charging the four boys until after conferring with the RG01 Starcorp's Board of Directors. All there knew that the boys could face charges of breaking and entering and/or trespassing and computer hacking. The four boys could face expulsion from the starcorp if found guilty of any one of these offenses. The head prosecutor was not inclined to inflict a punishment this drastic, but he preferred to know the thoughts of the Directors on this matter before dismissing this option.

Daniel and Wendy had recently settled into the apartment following their evening at the tennis tournament and the restaurant. Sawyer and Daphne were with them when they received the call regarding Adam’s detention. Daniel and Wendy arrived at the security center fifteen minutes after that contact. Before they could collect Adam, they endured another thirty minutes of summary, counsel, and clerical prerequisites. At the end of this, they left the Security Center with their third child in tow.

“What the hell was on your mind?” Daniel growled at his youngest child.

Daniel commenced his reprimand three seconds after the front door to their apartment closed shut. Wendy waited her turn to express her displeasure. She stood well behind her husband to give room for his aimless pacing and theatrical arm gesturing as he spoke. Sawyer and Daphne were present as well. They had been waiting there for their little brother to come home and for news about his fate. They stood back to the edge of the room to give space for the full range of their parent’s displeasure.

“Do you want to be sent back to Earth?” Daniel questioned with a shocked expression.

With his head lowered, slightly, Adam shook out a no along with a shrug.

“You're endangering the whole family with these pranks," Daniel roared back with outstretched arms. "What are we supposed to do if they decide to kick you out of here?"

"I don't know," Adam responded at close to a whisper.

"You can do so well here," Daniel roared at his son. "And you're just pissing that all away."

It was no secret to anyone in the family that Daniel and Wendy had high expectations for Adam. Their youngest child’s exceptional intellect was their proudest achievement. All their efforts to dote on their elder two children to an equal extent paled by comparison. In the eyes of Daniel and Wendy, Adam was the star of the family. He was the member of their number that they expected to go far in this new existence.

“What were you thinking, Adam?” Wendy implored with an astonished expression.

Adam avoided the gaze of his mother as he listened to her displeasure.

“I thought because there’s not a lot of security down there no one would care,” Adam explained dejectedly.

“This is RG01,” Daniel yelled back at his son. “This entire starcorp is a top-secret installation. Security is watching everything—How could you be so stupid? You’re smarter than this, Adam.”

Daniel’s angry rebuke caused Adam to feel and look even more dejected. After a moment of indecision, he whispered out, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

Daniel’s rage was weakened by his son’s pitiful display. After a few seconds of pacing, he turned to Adam and began to speak to him in a conciliatory tone.

“Adam, I understand that you’re eager to apply this extraordinary gift of yours to something, but this is not the way. When we get past this—If we get past it—you can never do anything like this again.”

“What were you thinking?” Wendy questioned an instant behind with a shake of her head.

Adam had no ready response to this. He did consider the risk of toying with the pods, but it was the risk that excited him. For Adam, his immediate world was boring. His high IQ, his abundance of energy, and his addiction to adrenalin pumping excitement made it impossible for him to remain within the confines of his adolescent world. All that he could see and perceive looked like toys for him to play with. His enthusiasm for life would not allow him to accept limitations on where he could go or what he could do. Audacity was always at the lead in his mischievous endeavors. The risk and danger within an act that he perceived to be doable made it even more irresistible. An arrogant assumption that his intellect was the equal of the endeavor always backed up this inclination.

“Honey, things like this go on your record,” Wendy admonished softly. “Something like this can cause you to lose opportunities.”

“I know, Mom,” Adam consented with a despondent expression. “I won’t do it again. I promise.”

Even as he made this promise Adam knew that it was unlikely that he could keep it. Adam always knew when he was doing something he should not, but this had no effect on his conscience until after he got caught doing it. He suspected that some future event, or situation, would prove too tempting for him to ignore. Despite this awareness, he wanted to be true to his word to his parents.

“I don’t want you going anywhere other than school until after the hearing,” Daniel directed sternly and with a point of his finger.

Daniel paused after this statement to give his son a look of sincerity. At the end of this, he put a question to his youngest son.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Adam responded with a downcast look. “I’m sorry I pulled you and Mom away from your days off.”

“We weren’t doing anything more important than you,” Wendy fervently reacted. “We’re just worried for you. We want you to have a good life.”

Daniel spoke up behind his wife with nearly as much warmth.

“You have so much potential, Adam. And we’re very proud of you, but you can’t just go around doing anything you want. Bad decisions can have consequences.”

Several seconds later Daniel decided that he had said all that needed to be said. He turned about and set off for his room. Wendy lingered behind for a few seconds more and then followed her husband. As soon as they were gone from the family room Adam turned his attentions to his siblings and the disapproval he expected to hear from them.

“There’s going to be a hearing?” Daphne questioned with a look of exasperation.

“In a few days,” Adam reported solemnly.

“What’s going to happen at the hearing?” Sawyer asked with a look of puzzlement.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Daphne patronized loudly. “They’re going to decide what to do with him.”

Accustomed to his sister’s sharp remarks, Sawyer took the criticism stoically. After taking a moment to ponder it, he asked the question that resulted from the effort.

“They won’t send him back to Earth?” Sawyer inquired of Daphne with a bewildered look. “I mean, Adam is an adolescent.”

“He’s a delinquent,” Daphne sharply corrected. “He broke into a high-security area of the starship.”

“It wasn’t a high-security area,” Adam insisted with a quick response.

“It was a locked off part of the starship,” Daphne argued back. “The only way you could have gotten in there is by hacking into the starship mainframe.”

This remark produced the hint of a smile on Adam’s face. Despite the disappointment and inconvenience this had caused his family, Adam was still proud of his accomplishment. Shortly he gave voice to this feeling.

“There’s not many that could have done that,” Adam spoke up with an expression of excitement in his voice. “You should have seen the faces of the people in Security. Even Mom and Dad were impressed.”

Adam’s ego was often the mechanism for his troubles. Accomplishing what others could not was becoming an increasingly powerful motivator in him. At this moment, it was his need for acclaim that was causing him to boast of his achievement.

“And you’re proud of that?” Daphne challenged with a fierce look on her face.

“I just mean that it wasn’t easy to do,” Adam returned apologetically. “You have to admit that’s pretty impressive.”

Sawyer had no response to this. He knew that his brilliant little brother had done something remarkable. He envied Adam his extraordinary intellect. He wondered if he would act any different if had his brother’s genius for math and computer science.

Daphne had no envy for her youngest brother’s intellect. She was happy for him when he was not an annoying little brother. She regularly sought out his assistance with her studies and, during most occasions, she genuinely enjoyed his company. This event, however, was not one of those occasions, and she was quick to express this temperament.

“Pretty stupid,” Daphne flared back at Adam. “You need to understand one thing, Adam. I’m not getting kicked out of RG01 or sent back to Earth because of you. I’m old enough to change my membership status to independent. And I will if the Directors decide to kick you out of here. I don’t care what Mom and Dad decide to do—I’m staying here!”

Daphne displayed a fierce scowl as she lingered behind that statement. Several seconds later she turned about and set off for her room. Adam and Sawyer watched her leave with shocked expressions.


	16. An Ill Win

Neil Fitzgerald watched the blue-white globe slowly fill up his display as the spaceplane he was in moved closer to it. He saw nothing in this image that he had not seen during several dozen other trips down to Earth. It was the boredom he was experiencing that caused him to stare at the visage on the monitor. Neil had gone through this dissent on more occasions than he could recall without a laborious mental tally. He knew that the trip was too short for reading and just long enough to strain his patience.

For Neil, trips down to Earth always involved a task that he needed to perform. He always limited his presence on the planet to as short a time as possible. His home aboard the Starship Berenberg had him spoiled for the comforts that came with being a spacer. This was a condition that Earth could not come close to matching in its present state. The crowded cities, and the poor waste management, along with the frequent interactions with insects and the infrequent encounters with rodents turned all his time out of doors into unpleasant experiences. These distractions were immensely disagreeable for most spacers. Neil’s sensibilities found these occurrences more unsettling than most male spacers would.

Despite his distaste for his visits to Earth, Neil was happy with his situation. He knew that there was an army of people jockeying for position as his replacement and for similar postings. The position of Delegate to an Earth State was an important high-profile job. It also provided the person doing the job with an up-close view of the inner workings of Earth politics. Neil had high expectations for this position. He saw it as a pathway to a BX01 Board of Director seat in the distant future. Until then he was prepared to accept all that he did as dues to be paid towards that ambition.

On this day, Neil was on his way to Thames. This was his usual destination on Earth. He was the Delegate with the best track record with the Thames Government. The most important missions to this State were always assigned to him. This was a distinction that he had worked hard to attain. He perceived each trip down to Thames as an opportunity to reaffirm his importance to the BX01 Starcorp League.

The dissent down to the Thames Spaceport took little more than forty minutes from start to finish. Less than a minute after the spaceplane’s wheels touched down on the tarmac, the zero-gravity field was turned off. Neil took comfort from the sensation of Earth’s gravity. The perception of control that he had when there was gravity was preferable to the alternative.

After the spaceplane had settled into its parking space, it took Neil little more than five minutes to secure himself and his belongings inside a waiting electric vehicle. In appearance, it looked like an upsized minivan. It had soft rounded corners and seams in the vehicle could not be found seen from a distance. The rounded corners gave it the appearance of molded glass. It looked as if it could have just been driven off the showroom floor moments before. The spacious interior exuded luxury. The passenger compartment had facing seats. The driver’s compartment was separated by a window. A small storage compartment was at the rear of the vehicle. Ten seconds after the last door was shut, the chauffeur for the car drove off to a predetermined destination. Neil sat alone in the back seat. The driver was a well-dressed man that spoke only when he was spoken to.

Within five minutes, Neil’s transport was merging onto a motorway. Traffic on the motorway was sporadic. A heavy midday overcast hung over a congested landscape of multi-level buildings. The visage of urban sprawl extended out in all directions for as far as the eye could see. The gloom of the thick gray clouds seemingly mirrored the dense megalopolis below it. The motorway that Neil was traveling upon was pristine by comparison to the concrete jungle to either side. The well-maintained roadway was uncluttered with pedestrian and the debris that they often left behind.

The vehicle was expected to reach its destination in no more than a quarter of an hour. Neil sat back in silence and waited for this time to pass. He resisted the urge to strum his fingers along the armrest. Being summoned down to Earth was a rare event for him. He could recall two other occasions when his presence was requested by the Prime Minister of Thames. In both recollections, the reason for the meeting was communicated in the summons. In this case, Neil had no idea why he had been called down to meet with him. Normally, this would not give him reason to be apprehensive, but there was a secondary oddity that was casting a shadow onto this summons. During the previous nine days, Prime Minister Hagerman had not been seen in public. Only his immediate family and closest staffers could attest to continued existence. To accomplish this disappearing act, he had to cancel half a dozen high-level meetings. Speculation that he was in ill health was circulating throughout Thames and around the world. This was occurring despite repeated assurances from the Prime Minister’s Press Secretary that this was not the case. In the summons, Peter Carr, Minister of State for Thames, assured Neil that Hagerman was still functional and said nothing more on the subject. However, it was Carr’s reluctance to give any explanation for Hagerman’s absence or the reason for the summons that gave Neil cause to be suspicious.

Ten minutes after steering the vehicle onto the motorway the driver began making his exit. The vehicle settled to a stop at the end of the junction. A red light held the chauffeur in check. Other than that, there was little else to stop him from driving on. Vehicular traffic was almost nonexistent. Thirty seconds later the light turned green and the chauffeur turned the car onto the surface street. It took him another seven minutes to direct the vehicle to a three-story brick home. A modest amount of open ground was situated all around the building. Bordering that was a seven-foot-high decorative brick wall. Two police officers were standing guard outside a large ornate front gate, and a second pair of officers were one the other side. In response to a hand signal from an approaching officer, the chauffeur lowered his window. He identified himself and his passenger to the officer and was authorized for admittance an instant behind that. One minute later Neil was standing outside the front door and waiting for someone to answer his ring.

“Please come in, Mr. Fitzgerald,” a tall, elegant, woman of senior years invited after opening the front door.

Neil recognized the woman as Natalie Hagerman, the wife of the Prime Minister of Thames. They had interacted with each other, socially, on many occasions. He responded to her invite by stepping through the doorway with a smile. A second after entering just beyond the front door, he and Natalie exchanged greetings and inquiries about each other’s health and family. Natalie’s response to the latter was that her family was doing well, “for the most part.” Neil took special note of this reply but asked nothing more on the subject. He was not given time to say more. Natalie turned about and began leading him to the room where her husband was waiting.

“Have a seat,” James extended after Neil had walked three steps into his study.

A second behind this, Natalie gave her husband a smile and backed out of the room, closing the door after her. Neil took a seat opposite James in a large leather lounge chair. The chairs were situated near an ornate fireplace of moderate size.

“Can I get you one?” James questioned as he displayed his glass of whiskey out in front of him.

“Yes,” Neil accepted with a nod of his head.

Without a second thought, James pushed himself up from his chair and set off for the alcohol bar that was situated along the wall on the other side of the room. As he did this, Neil scrutinized him for signs of impairment. He noted how James arose from his chair with the ease and vigor that he normally displayed. He watched the Prime Minister walk across the study with the gait of a man that looked to be well rested and in need of the movement so that he could stretch his legs. He noticed that James was comfortably dressed in loose fitting slacks, a long sleeved knit shirt, and loafers, attire that he did not associate with a person that was sick. His demeanor appeared to be as calm and as pleasant as it had ever been. By Neil’s assessment, there were no signs that James was ill or had been so in the recent past.

James returned to Neil with a half-full tumbler of Blended Scotch Whiskey and extended it out before him. Neil took it in hand with a nod and a “thank you.” After this, James retook his seat across from his visitor. Neil scrutinized him as he downed a gulp of his whiskey. He took a moment to savor its smoothness. A second behind this he set his glass down on the end table next to him and commenced the task of speaking his thoughts.

“Okay, why am I here?”

“I’m going up—now,” James declared in a flat tone and with a blank stare.

Neil was taken aback by this declaration. He was not sure what he was hearing. His mind understood what this statement suggested, but he was reluctant to believe it. He began to entertain the thinking that he was speaking of something, entirely, different and that he was misconstruing his verbiage. This remained a plausible idea throughout the brief pause between James’ first declaration and his second.

“Me, my wife, my children and their children—you’re going to make it happen,” James continued with the same weight of determination. “You talk to whomever you have to, but you make it happen.”

After this statement, there was no doubt in Neil’s mind regarding the meaning behind James’ words. The Prime Minister of Thames was demanding that he and his family be allowed to immigrate up into a starcorp. It was not uncommon for earthbound politicians to migrate up into a starcorp. This was a gift routinely given to influential political leaders that were friendly to them. Neil was fully aware that Prime Minister Hagerman was offered and had accepted an invitation to migrate up into a starcorp at some point in his future. It was the timing that had him stunned with disbelief.

Ten months earlier Hagerman was reaffirmed as the Prime Minister of Thames when the party that he led won the General Election. This was the fourth successive General Election that he participated in as the party leader and their fourth successive win. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was his popularity that was holding his party in control of the Government. No one inside or outside of the starcorps entertained the idea that he would make a request to migrate up into a starcorp at this time. This was not done by a politician that was still in office. They knew that the starcorps needed them where they were.

Invariably these immigration guarantees were arranged so that an earthbound politician could take advantage of them at the end of their political careers. The BX01 Starcorp League dangled this offer before them with the implicit proviso that they would have to earn it by supporting starcorp policies when called on to do so. Most political leaders on Earth that were friendly to the starcorps made this trade. Most saw it as a kind of insurance policy they could exercise if things went bad on Earth. Despite this agreement, when asked to support something they thought was politically damaging, it was not uncommon for an earthbound leader to balk on their word. Despite this, it was understood that the politician’s past and future assistance to the starcorps sustained the agreement between them. 

These favors between Spacers and Earthers were commonplace transactions. One or more ex-political leader migrated up to a starcorp every year. Other than this, there was no overt proof of this quid-pro-quo practice, but everyone suspected these deals were being made behind closed doors. Even though these agreements were regular occurrences, no political leader dared to openly declare his or her participation in one of these transactions while they were still in office. They all knew this would be an act of political suicide. In this James Hagerman was no different than any other political leader that was secretly negotiating with the starcorps. He preached his devotion to Earth, and to Earthers while preparing to immigrate up into a starcorp in his post-politicial life.

“Prime Minister, you’ve just won your fourth election to this office. You can’t be considering this now,” Neil implored with a stunned expression.

“I’m past considering,” James corrected solemnly. “I need you to do this now.”

“Maybe when you finish this…”

“No,” James contradicted in a stern voice and with a shake of his head. “It has to be now.”

Neil was taken aback by the urgency that was suggestive in this last remark. His mind jumped to the question, why now, and he put this to the Prime Minister shortly after the thought.

“I’m going to die,” James reported blandly. “My doctor says the strokes will happen more often. He tells me that they will increase in frequency and harm until one of them is so acute that it will kill me on the spot despite my preventive medication.”

This report took Neil by surprise. He had no immediate response to it. He knew, assuming this report was true, that James’ only hope for survival was with the starcorps. He knew this to be true because it was beyond the capability of earthbound hospitalization to undo the wear and tear that came with aging. The best that Earth medicine could do was repair and reinforce the human body. Rejuvenating it to the height of its vigor required the kind of high tech and high-priced hospitalization that could only be found in space. This fact made it difficult for him to formulate a counter argument but not impossible.

“Prime Minister,” Neil supplicated. “You’re still riding high in the polls. You’re hugely popular across a third of the globe. We need you to lead the opposition against this One for All/All for One Pact that the Alberta Alliance is spearheading.”

“It’s time,” James insisted with a finite inflection. “I want out. Get someone else to fight your battles. I’m out. It’s over.”

Neil gave this a second of thought as he shook his head in disbelief. At the end of this, he began to deliver his response in a delicate tone of voice.

“This would be a dangerous move for the starcorps. I don’t think…”

Before he could finish his thought, James interrupted him with a barrage of words spoken in a strident tenor.

“You owe me this. I paid for this with fifty years of my life. I don’t give damn how this will affect the starcorps. I want what you owe me—what you promised.”

This demand transformed Neil’s demeanor into frustration. The last thing he wanted to do was go back to his bosses and report that their most valued ally on Earth, the person he was assigned to manage, wanted out. For several seconds, he aggressively searched for some mechanism that might give him leverage with James. Shortly, he concluded that soft talking James was not going to get him the result that he wanted. An instant behind this he formulated a bold response and delivered it with a tinge of finality.

“No, my recommendation to the board will be that you complete this term.”

James took in this reply with no visage that he had been fazed by this answer. He paused, behind this declaration, took a long deep breath and then commenced his response with a casual delivery.

“If I don’t get this, I will throw all of my support behind the United Front Pact. And that will be just the beginning. You will do this, or I will become your biggest problem.”

Neil was stupefied by this declaration. For several seconds, he did not know how to react or respond. Subconsciously he feared to aggravate the situation by challenging the resolution behind his words. Still, he could not bring himself to acquiesce to James’ demand. He resisted this despite his belief that the BX01 Starcorp League would elect to give in to James in the end. He knew from experience that the League would rather concede to James’ demand than send a message to other earthbound politicians that they could not be counted on to keep their promise.

The possible repercussion from this act was the largest worry for Neil. He feared that much of the political leverage that the starcorps had accrued on Earth would be undone by this single event. It was generally accepted by the members of the BX01 Starcorp League that it was unwise to give citizenship to a sitting earthbound politician that was friendly to the starcorps. It was believed smarter to wait until they were well into their post public lives and attention to them had greatly diminished. This was the opposite of James Hagerman’s situation. Neil had no doubt that most the Earth’s human residents would view James’ midterm migration into a starcorp as proof that he sold them out. Just the same, he could see no way around it. He knew that if James gave his support to the United Front Pact, then the anti-starcorp militants would be one large step closer to shaping the nature of relations between Earth and the starcorps.

“Okay, Neil agreed at the end of a short rumination. “I’ll tell my superiors. Can you give us a week to think it over?”

“You’ve got two days to get back to me with the answer I want,” James instructed without a moment of hesitation.

“Okay, two days.”


	17. An Unexpected Turn

The room was Spartan and much smaller than what Adam anticipated. The chamber that he, his parents, and their attorney walked into was just large enough to comfortably accommodate a twelve-chair conference table. There were no adornments inside. A view of the promenade could be seen out of two ceiling to floor windows. One extended along one side of the length of the room and the other extended across one end of its width. The promenade was fifteen floors below them. The structure extended up like a column from the middle of the mall floor to the ceiling. The promenade footpath and garden continued around it. This structure was in the administrative headquarters of the starship.

Before stepping through the doorway, Adam anticipated seeing something along the lines of a courtroom setting with seating for two or three dozen spectators. This configuration was what he frequently saw in movies and on the news. He understood that this was a hearing and not a trial, but he thought that the format would be the same. The fact that it was different than what he expected was a bit of a relief for him.

Adam’s fear at this moment was that he would be expelled from RG01. He had an even greater fear of being sent back to Earth. He had no idea what his parents would do if it came to that. They had spoken to him very little over the previous two days. He took solace from this as well. His parents had spent several hours conferring with their attorney over the previous two days. If there was a threat of him being expelled, he suspected that they would have said something, even if it was just to each other. He also let go a sigh of relief when he heard the attorney reminded his parents that expulsion was unlikely.

“They would have to prove to a jury that this punishment is warranted. And it’s extremely unlikely that they can do this.”

The attorney went on to advise them that they were probably looking at a hefty fine.

“Unfortunately, the hard job for us will be selling this offense as a misdemeanor infraction. The fines are much larger for criminal infractions.”

For Adam, a criminal infraction was preferable to expulsion from the starcorp, but he had his dread of it as well. He knew that a criminal infraction fine would have a significant financial impact on his parents. This was an inconvenience that he had no wish to cause them. When he did his mischievous acts, he never considered the possibility of getting caught let alone doing any harm to his parents. Over the past two days, the thought of doing harm to his mother and father weighed heavy on his thoughts.

It was generally known among spacers that fines were favored over incarceration as a form of punishment. The consensus among starcorps was that prisons were expensive institutions that gave nothing back for the expenditure of money to operate them. The per-person expense associated with living in space made this kind of waste completely unacceptable. As a rule, dangerous individuals were kept detained in a psychiatric facility until they were certified as no longer a threat. This was unavoidable. However, when it was practical, these individuals were sent to Earth for their internment. Malefactors that were not considered a threat to others, and still perceived to be an asset to the starcorp were fined for their transgression. The amount of the fine was configured to match the size of the offense and the wealth of the offender. The guiding rule in this was that the fine had to be big enough to hurt to the extent that was equivalent to the offense. Fines for criminal infractions were regularly set for an amount that could take years, or even decades, to pay off. The money was taken right out of the offender’s income, in increments. Over time, these fines could be renegotiated to a lesser or greater amount to match a change in the malefactor’s circumstance. It was also possible to forgive the debt altogether. This was done in rare instances when the malefactor performed some service for the starcorp that was deemed of value or benevolence. These variations in the size of the fines were decisions that were made by the courts and the Board of Directors. The only alteration that could be made without the permission of the court was the source of the funds used to pay them. Any fine could be paid off by someone other than the person it was given to. Adam was planning to do just that when he became self-supporting.

Ivan Kursk was the attorney advocating for the Becks. He quickly positioned himself in the center chair on one side of the conference table while ushering Adam into the one on his right. Daniel and Wendy took seats in the chairs to the right of Adam. They sat there in quiet for more than a minute. At the end of this time an average looking man hurried into the room. He barely noted the others in the room as he walked over to the opposite side of the table with a file folder in his hands.

“Hello, hello,” he announced in rapid fire.

He then settled himself into the chair across from Ivan, opened and positioned his folder on the table in front of him and then gave the Becks his first good look before speaking with an upbeat tone.

“I am Gavin Hayworth, Assistant Prosecutor for RG01.”

Adam was immediately heartened by Hayworth’s tenor of speech and overall demeanor. From his perspective, he looked to be in a good mood. This he was equating as likely good news for him. Despite this thinking, anxiety kept his breathing shallow.

“Okay,” Hayworth continued with an amused expression. “The first thing you should know is that expulsion is off the table. So, you don’t have to worry about it. That’s not an option.”

Hayworth paused after saying this to give the Becks time to relax. He gave them a mixture of a smile and a smirk as he briefly looked at each of them, and then he began to speak again.

“And we will not be filing charges provided that you accept our compromise sanction.”

Daniel was visibly relieved to hear this. He had spent the previous two days preparing for bad news. Talks with Ivan gave him reason to believe that he would be paying for his son’s transgression for the next three years, at the least. He had no idea what this compromise sanction might be, but he suspected that he would be amenable to it.

Wendy, on the other hand, was confused by Hayworth’s declaration. She was anticipating a large fine, but this did not worry her as it did Daniel. The wellbeing of Adam was her sole concern, and she was prepared to pay any price to achieve that. This compromise sanction that Hayworth was speaking of was an unknown quantity. Consequently, she did not know if she would be amenable to it or not. In Wendy’s mind, relief could not come until after she knew what the punishment was.

Adam was also confused by the term compromise sanction. He was glad to hear that his parents were not going to be levied with a hefty fine, but the compromise sanction they had to accept to avoid this had him more than a little worried. He hoped that he would be the person fulfilling this compromise punishment, and he feared what that meant. He could not imagine it being anything good given what weighed in the balance.

“Wait a minute,” Ivan disputed. “If you’re not filing charges then our business is concluded here.”

Ivan’s challenge took Daniel, Wendy and Adam by surprise. They had no idea why he was arguing against the compromise ahead of hearing it. Daniel and Wendy were reluctant to oppose their attorney. They suspected that he had his reason for being averse to Hayworth’s offer, but they could not imagine what that might be. Conflicted by this thinking, Daniel and Wendy looked to their attorney with confused expressions.

Assistant Prosecutor Hayworth understood Ivan’s objection. Negotiations between prosecutors and defendants at this point were always about the weight of charges that would be filed. Compromises were based upon the weight of evidence, the likelihood of a conviction, the weight of the punishment and the degree of amelioration that would be given for a guilty plea. The only exception to this was when the defendant had information to exchange for a dismissal of some or all the charges. The fact that he was offering a dismissal of all charges in exchange for some alternative form of punishment was not only out of the norm, it went beyond the scope of the prosecutor’s power. If there were no charges, then how could there be a punishment? To right this in the mind of the defense attorney Hayworth addressed this dichotomy with his next remark.

“Relax, counselor, this compromise punishment isn’t a penalty in the usual application of the word. This is more of a deal that we would like to make with Mr. and Mrs. Beck, and with Adam.”

“But what you’re saying is,” Ivan returned with a questioning inflection. “The Becks must accept this offer to avoid charges, but there will be a punishment? And if they do not accept, you will file charges?”

“We will be obliged to file criminal charges if we do not get this agreement,” Hayworth gently concurred.

Ivan stiffened himself in his seat and then commenced to deliver his objection.

“This is outside of your authority, Mr. Hayworth, and I advise you to be careful here.”

Ivan’s veiled threat came as no surprise to Hayworth. He understood his offer sounded as if he was trying to coerce the Becks into an off the books punishment. It was beyond the power of his office to implement such a punishment. This was doubly true for an offense that they were not filing charges for. Hayworth knew that he had to remove this misunderstanding from the negotiation.

“When I say we, I mean the Board of Directors,” Hayworth explained with a palms-up gesture.

As the governing head of the starcorp the Board of Directors were well within their power to negotiate an alternative to a legal proceeding in response to Adam’s transgression. However, it was unusual for them to become involved in a single insignificant criminal act.

This declaration by Hayworth took Ivan by surprise. He had no immediate response. Daniel and Wendy were even more confused by it, and Adam was in confusion over the whole discussion. After a moment of thought, Ivan came up with the only response that he deemed pertinent to this revelation.

“What’s the offer?”

“It would appear that young Mr. Beck’s antics has caught the attention of the Board of Directors,” Hayworth began with a look at the open folder in front of him. “I’ve been instructed to offer Adam a position in the robotics plant.”

Wendy was startled by this offer and quickly reacted to it.

“He’s still a boy. He hasn’t finished his compulsory education.”

“Employment will be part time,” Hayworth explained an instant behind. “He will remain your dependent. Nothing will change with regards to your membership contract.”

“I don’t understand,” Daniel spoke up with a perplexed expression. “How is this supposed to be a punishment?”

“As far as I can tell, it’s not a punishment,” Hayworth corrected with a shake of his head. “Apparently, the directors have a high regard for your son’s intellect, Mr. Beck.”

Daniel was taken aback by this statement. This turn of events was far better than his most hopeful wish for this meeting. He had high hopes for his youngest son’s future. He was happy to learn that there were others that believed in his potential.

Adam was intrigued by the offer, but he still was not sure if this was a good or bad situation for him. He had no desire to be cleaning up after others in his spare time. He had his own projects and hobbies to attend to. It was his suspicion that a part time job would interfere with his pastime.

“What will I be doing?” Adam spoke up with a wide-eyed expression.

“You will be working as an intern in the robotic software division of the plant,” Hayworth responded with a shrug. “Beyond that, I don’t know.”

Hayworth paused to see if his answer was what Adam wanted to hear. He noted that he was still confused and elected to add more to his answer to allay this if he could.

“I’m told that you have a genius for computers. I believe that the idea here is to give you some constructive work that will challenge that intellect of yours.”

Hayworth paused again to note the effect of his words. At the end of this time, he put the question to the Becks that he needed an answer to.

“Do we have an agreement?”

Daniel and Wendy looked to each other first and then to their son. Adam nodded his agreement without hesitation or enthusiasm. He simply saw no other option. Two seconds later Daniel looked to Hayworth and gave him their answer in a word, “yes.”

“Good,” Hayworth responded as pushed a piece of paper towards Adam. “You are to report to human resources tomorrow. Your supervisor will tell you what your duties are, and your overall project manager is Eric Pettorino.”


	18. Night of Revelations

“Hi,” Sharon greeted with a wide smile.

The quick opening of the front door a few seconds after his knock did not surprise Sawyer. He knew that Sharon was expecting him. What did surprise him was the aesthetics of her appearance. The extraordinary beauty of Sharon’s visage on the other side of the doorway put him in a momentary state of amazement. He anticipated that she would be in her best attire, but what he saw before him was far more than what he expected. Sharon stood before him in a silver colored, strapless, figure-hugging, floor-length gown that flared out from just above the knees down. Crystal drop earrings dangled from either ear. A bracelet comprised of a string of pearls adorned her left wrist. Her hair flowed down in long soft curls and ended five inches below her shoulders. Her expression was shaped into a bashful smile. Sawyer was overwhelmed. So much so that it took him several seconds of confused thinking to produce a reply to her greeting.

“Hi,” Sawyer fumbled out after a time.

Standing deeper inside the apartment was a woman of mature years. Ms. Stewart was tall, exceedingly attractive and elegantly adorned. She looked every bit the role of a middle-class mom. In reality, Ms. Stewart was a well to do member of RG01’s upper class community. This was a status that she owed entirely to her beauty. In demeanor she seemed to be less than pleased with what she saw at the front door. A hint of a smile and a steady stare shaped her expression. 

“Come on in,” Sharon urged Sawyer with a broad smile.

Sawyer complied with her lead and stepped through the open doorway. He stopped half a dozen feet past the entrance and took an attentive posture before Sharon’s mother. He too was dressed to impress. A perfectly cut tuxedo adorned his person and every part of his person was groomed to suit his attire.

“Mom, this is Sawyer Beck,” Sharon began in a pleasant tone, “this year’s Adolescent Male Single’s Tennis Tournament Champion.”

Sharon’s mother briefly examined Sawyer from behind a barely perceptible smile. She then congratulated him on his winning of the Adolescent Male Single’s Championship. Sawyer returned her salutation with a large helping of humility. This formality of introduction did not last more than two minutes. At the end of it, Sharon lured Sawyer out the front door and off towards the Awards Ceremony.

This was the day of the ceremony to publicly recognize this year’s sports winners. More than one-thousand RG01 members were expected to be in attendance inside the Oasis Gala Auditorium, within the starship of the same name. The bulk of RG01’s populace was expected to be watching the event live via the starcorp’s public communication network. Most of the people in attendance at the auditorium were expected to be among rich and powerful members of Starcorp RG01. A tiny percentage of these audiences were comprised of the winners with their dates and families. Sawyer, with Sharon on his arm, rendezvoused with his parents outside of the Oasis Gala Auditorium.

“You look amazing, Sharon,” Wendy gushed with a look of wide-eyed surprise.

“Thank you,” Sharon acknowledged with a bashful grin.

Yes, you do,” Daniel concurred with a nod and a smile.

Sharon took this compliment with a grin and a blush before responding in kind to Sawyer’s parents. After a minute of greetings and admiring one another, the four of them went into the complex. The auditorium had seating for two-thousand people. Most the people in attendance were invited members of the top echelon of the RG01 hierarchy. The remainder was the award winners and their company of friends and family. The stage extended across the wall opposite to the main entrance.

It took a full thirty minutes for the auditorium to fill up with people. The audience spent much of this time seeking out their assigned seats. Shortly after the audience was settled the stage curtains slid apart as the lights in the auditorium dimmed off. A medium size orchestra was situated to the right and the rear of the stage. It promptly began to play music. After nearly ten minutes of this, a master of ceremonies came out and the show began in earnest.

In between the ceremony of handing out an award to each team and individual that won a championship in their respective sport, various musical performers came out to entertain the audience. This was as much an event for them as it was for the athletes. Only the top entertainers were invited to perform at these events. The fact that these ceremonies were televised and commanded the attention of a large audience made them highly prized bookings for performers.

Ninety minutes after the ceremony’s start, it was over. Sawyer was called up onto the stage to receive his engraved gold medallion forty minutes earlier. Highlights of his year in tennis preceded this proclamation of him as this year’s Adolescent Male Singles Tennis Champion. After a brief and modest thank you, Sawyer spent the remainder of the proceedings as a spectator. At the end of the presentation, the bulk of the live audience retreated to a banquet hall in an adjacent structure. A small band, tables, chairs, food and refreshments, and a dance floor were in place for their enjoyment. This was the closing event of the evening, the mixing, and mingling of peoples from all sectors of the Starcorp RG01. For Sawyer, this portion of the event was nearly as uncomfortable as his brief appearance on stage. For Sharon, it was the highlight of the evening.

This segment of the event afforded Sharon the opportunity to make use of her attire to its maximum benefit, for her. In the beginning, she adorned herself to Sawyer flirtatiously, but this she did more for her sake than his. Starting from the instant that she stepped into the banquet hall, Sharon began scanning the myriad of faces there with discrete glances. Shortly after entering the hall she led Sawyer onto the dance floor, overruling his objection in the process. Daniel and Wendy separated from their youthful companions and set out in search of amusement elsewhere in the hall.

Out on the dance floor, Sharon ignored Sawyer’s clumsy attempt at appearing graceful and confident. Her attention was too affixed on exhibiting herself for all others. She blandly followed Sawyer’s lead while glancing about to catch the eye of other males in the room. A short time after this first dance a tall, handsome and mature looking man approached Sharon and identified himself to Sawyer as an acquaintance of hers. Within a few of seconds after this meeting, he requested a dance with Sharon. She accepted, ahead of Sawyer’s approval.

In truth, they were acquaintances. Sharon had met him at the awards ceremony one year earlier. His name was Arthur Chaplin. His appearance and vigor were suggestive of a man in his mid-thirties, at the worse. His actual age was 67. By education, he was a physician. By profession, he was the Health Systems Administrator at the RG01 Medical Center. In this position, he answered to the Chief Executive Officer of the Medical Center and a member of the top thirty percent in wealth. Arthur’s subservience to him existed only within their profession. The size of Arthur’s financial portfolio more than doubled that of his superior. His confident demeanor, good looks and sizeable fortune made Arthur Chaplin a well-known playboy with six expensive mistresses under exclusive contract to him.

Arthur led Sharon by the hand onto the dance floor. Ballroom music reverberated out from the live band. The floor was filled with elegantly attired couples moving about in synchronized steps. Sawyer watched with a confused expression as Sharon and Arthur moved into the middle of this assemblage.

“Weren’t you here with someone else last year?” Arthur questioned shortly after taking Sharon into his arms.

Sharon gave the question a brief bashful smile before responding to it.

“Yes, I was.”

Sharon and Arthur continued to dance amid a crowd of couples that numbered more than twenty. After several seconds, Arthur spoke again.

“You must be very popular with the boys in your school?”

“My popularity isn’t limited to just boys,” Sharon playfully countered.

“Oh, of that I’m sure,” Arthur returned with a smile.

With two steps, Arthur gave her a near complete turnabout before speaking again.

“I’m guessing that the only thing that’s been stopping you from adding men to your trail of broken hearts is your age.”

“That won’t be the case for long,” Sharon assured with an air of confidence. “I turn sixteen in two months. When I do, I’m filing for emancipation.”

Once again Arthur gave her answer a momentary smile before responding to it.

“Are you looking forward to this next stage of your life?” Arthur questioned with a quizzical look.

“I’m counting the minutes,” Sharon spoke back with a mischievous smile.

Half a century earlier, in most starcorps, the age of consent was lowered to include emancipated 16-year-olds. In a few other starcorps, it was lowered to one or two years below that. This was due to several factors. The law against unsanctioned sex was written to help contain the spread of sexually transmitted diseases among adults. This law was extended to cover teenagers a few years later. This was done so that sexually active teenagers could be screened for diseases along with the adults. To facilitate compliance with this law, teenagers could register their sexual partners without the consent or knowledge of their parents. This law was initially applied with the restriction that this sex was occurring between pre-adult teenagers. With that act teenage sex transitioned from adolescent misbehavior to a recognized practice that was managed by the starcorp’s Department of Health. The existence of social contracts made it possible for many attractive adults attain a comfortable living through the social market. Teenagers quickly became aware that they were giving away something to other adolescents that adults were willing to pay a large amount of money for, their innocence. This was especially true for females, but it was the demand for teenage males that brought about this change in the age of consent.

Emancipated teenagers were a growing reality within the starcorps. The ease of life, the inexpensive schools and the guaranteed food, shelter and medical insurance for all members was motivation for a growing percentage of pre-adult teenagers to file for emancipation and enter the workforce early. The growing population of middle-aged adult females became increasingly eager for access to these randy emancipated males with state governed sex privileges. Often these teenage males were far more eager to entertain their yearnings than older men were. And there was a growing population of adult females that were keen on obliging their amorous desires. The pressure for a change in the age of consent grew over time. It did not take long for the starcorps to begin writing a new law that permitted this union. But it was the unwritten law that made adolescent females a part of this revision, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Arthur had danced Sharon about for half a dozen more steps before speaking to her report with a roguish inflection of his own.

“You sound like a young lady with a plan.”

“All young ladies have plans,” Sharon corrected without hesitation.

After a second of reflection, Sharon completed her retort with an amused expression.

“It’s just that some of us have bigger plans than others.”

“Don’t tell me,” Arthur instructed with quick response. “Your plan is to become the youngest female to ever earn a starcorp Board of Directors seat.”

“Boring,” Sharon returned with a dismissive air.

“No?” Arthur spoke with near to a grin on his face.

Arthur’s first guess was not a serious attempt and his second one was even more playful.

“Okay I’ve got it, you’re a science nerd?” Arthur spoke in a slightly mocking tone.

“Not in this lifetime,” Sharon haughtily deflected.

“So, tell me, Ms. Stewart, how do you plan on making your mark?” Arthur spoke back with a smile and a look.

“Marking territory is a male thing,” Sharon explained with a smug expression. “I’m here for the party.”

“Oh, a party girl,” Arthur retorted with a small act of surprise.

“That’s right,” Sharon confirmed a supercilious expression. “A life without enjoyment is a wasted life. I plan on enjoying as much of mine as I can.”

“And how do you plan on financing this party?” Arthur challenged a second behind.

“Through a man of course,” Sharon explained back with a smirk.

Arthur took this answer with a grin. He turned Sharon about with three more steps and then asked a question with a steady stare.

“Do you have a particular man in mind?”

Amused by the question Sharon answered back with a look and a smile.

“Several.”

“Dare I ask?” Arthur nearly whispered back.

Still very much amused by the conversation, Sharon responded his question with a question.

“I don’t know. Dare you?”

Arthur was more than a little entertained by this conversation. The little minx, as he perceived Sharon, was the highest form of delight that he had received in a very long time. Her age was the only thing stopping him from initiating verbal advances at this moment. He mused over this for several seconds while exchanging smiles and stares with her. At the end of this time, he asked the only question he thought safe enough to put to her.

“So, tell me Ms. Stewart, are you a Traditional Social Contract kind of girl?”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Sharon retorted casually.

Arthur was encouraged by this answer. It was not uncommon for young girls to entertain the idea of being in a traditional relationship with a wealthy man. At this moment, he knew that Sharon was anything but traditional. And he suspected that he was the target of her plan.

“Well, when you come of age I hope you’ll give me a chance to submit a bid for your attention.” Arthur solicited politely.

Sharon took a moment to bare a sly grin. She then responded to his invite with an equally sly response.

“From what I hear, you don’t have any room for my attention.”

“I can always find room for someone I like,” Arthur defended with a slightly confused expression.

“Well, I hope you find someone like me who’s willing to share your attention,” Sharon returned with no small amount of guile. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

Arthur was confused by this turn in the conversation. Up until then his suspicion was that Sharon was pursuing him. Her dismissal of his offer did not fit in with this thinking. After a moment of thought, he came to thinking that Sharon was dismissing the contract and not him. A second later he tested this idea with a question.

“Don’t tell me that you’re opposed to Group Social Contracts,” Arthur queried with a bemused look.

“I don’t believe in sharing anything that’s mine,” Sharon answered back with a sharp edge to her tone.

An instant after speaking these words the music trailed off into silence. Sharon and Arthur took a half step back from each other and paused there to continue their converse. Arthur took a moment to ponder her last statement and then he spoke to it with a smile.

“Well, Ms. Stewart that’s a pretty steep order. There aren’t many wealthy suitors out there willing to sign on to an Exclusive Social Contract.”

“Really,” Sharon challenged boldly and without hesitation. “I’ve counted nine in this room and that’s just the one’s I know about.”

“So, you keep a running list of nearby wealthy men?” Arthur questioned with near to a grin on his face.

Sharon returned his grin with a broad smile. She retained her amused demeanor as she spoke to his last remark.

“A plan only works when you work it.”

Suddenly Arthur was captivated by the audacity of the teenage girl standing before him. He knew at that moment that he wanted her more than any woman of his acquaintance. And he had no doubt that he would give much to have her. It was the businessman in him that caused him to haggle against her plan.

“Well, it’s been my experience that everyone has a price,” Arthur returned nonchalantly.

“I’m sure that’s true,” Sharon spoke back with equal indifference and a slight shake of her head.

“So, what’s your price, Ms. Stewart?” Arthur questioned bluntly.

Sharon took a moment to ponder the question while holding an amused expression. At the end of this, she gave him his answer with a cool delivery.

“I think that if you took the money that you’re paying those six women you have under contract and doubled it that would probably be just about right.”

This answer prompted Arthur to produce a large smile. Sharon reacted to this with a hint of a smile on top of a complacent expression. A second behind this the music began to play again. As this happened, a second mature male stopped to either side of them. He was two inches shorter and far less handsome than Arthur. And he addressed himself to Sharon.

“Hello, Sharon, may I have this dance.”

“Mr. Linzer, absolutely,” Sharon happily responded with an expression of surprise on her face.

Sawyer noted Sharon’s change in dance partners from across the room. He had been standing alone there since she separated from him. His parents were being occupied by a conversation with several others in another section of the room. He gave no thought to joining them. The whole of his focus was on Sharon.

~~~~~LINE BREAK~~~~~

“If it comes down to military action, I think we should initiate a first strike bombardment from space,” a short angry man asserted fiercely. “Destroy their major industries, their transportation network, their space ports—the war would be over before it starts.”

Daniel and Wendy made themselves a part of this exchange five minutes earlier. So far, they had contributed nothing to it beyond an introduction. They were, however, keenly interested in the subject.

“BX01 Congress will never okay that,” a tall, ruggedly handsome man, with an athletic build, softly countered.

“Why not?” The short man challenged vociferously.

The tall man showed no sign that he was perturbed by the short man’s abrupt return. After taking a casual breath, he turned his attention towards the shorter man, with his eyes more so than his head, and gave his explanation with a soft delivery.

“If we did a large-scale bombardment from space, we would be looking at ten million civilian deaths within the first forty-eight hours, just from the collateral damage. There would be another quarter of a billion deaths over the next year from starvation, disease and exposure. If you think the Earthers hate us now, how do you think they will feel after that?”

“I agree that would be a catastrophe,” a rotund man of average height supported in a gruff voice. “But do we really have any other choice.”

“Exactly!” The short man insisted emphatically.

“Yes, we do,” a thin man of medium height contradicted with an inflection that suggested he had spoken the obvious. “We can negotiate our reintegration with Earth. It doesn’t make sense for us to be detached from the world that we come from.”

“That’s not going to happen,” the short man corrected out-of-hand.

The thin man was unnerved by this perfunctory dismissal of his thinking. His unease was supported by the fact that none of the others thought to support him. Ideally, the thin man hoped that the tall man would come to his defense. After two seconds of waiting, he gave voice to the query that was on the tip of his tongue.

“Why not?”

“The BX01 Congress will never go for it,” the short man answered glumly.

“You hear what the Earthers are saying.” A tall lady supported with a near astonished expression. “They want to attach ninety percent of the starcorps’ net worth and sell it off as common stock to Earthers. They’re talking about swapping out starcorp members with employees from Earth.”

“So, what are you saying?” The thin man questioned with a confused look. “We just wait for them to attack us and fight them off.”

“If it comes to war we lose,” the tall man softly asserted with an offhand inflection.

“So, we’re just making these weapons for nothing?” The rotund man questioned back with a ruffled brow.

“I hope so,” the tall man answered as he gazed, introspectively, into the empty space in front him and three feet above the floor.

The short man suddenly took exception to this corrective remark from the tall stranger. The tall man had joined their converse without introduction not more than two minutes earlier. And his remarks smacked of being authoritative. The short man did not like being spoken to as though he did not know what he was talking about. For him, this last statement from the tall man was the final straw. He quickly directed his mind the task of discovering if the tall man had the credentials to know anything on the subject or if he was just a talkative janitor.

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t get your name?” The short man questioned with a steady stare into the eyes of the tall stranger.

“Joshua Sloan.”

“And what do you do, Mr. Sloan?” The short man questioned an instant behind that answer.

Joshua gave the question a moment of thought before deriving a fitting lie.

“I’m in insurance.”

~~~~~LINE BREAK~~~~~

For Sawyer and Sharon, the evening’s festivities lasted for another three hours. Daniel and Wendy left for home in half that time. Daniel had no desire to wait for Sawyer and his date, and Wendy had no interest in being in Sharon’s company any longer than she had to be. It was clear to all three of the Becks that Sharon was in her element there, but only Wendy suspected what this portended. She kissed her son on the cheek before leaving him to discover what she suspected was soon to come. Less than one-eighth of the occupants, that filled the room that night, were still present when Sawyer and Sharon made their exits.

During their time aboard the transport craft that was taking them back to the Amaterasu, Sharon gushed about how much she enjoyed the evening. Sawyer could hardly get a word in during her endless descriptions of the evening’s events. She thanked Sawyer repeatedly for inviting her to attend it with him. When the transport started its docking maneuvers, Sawyer began to fear that his time was running out with her. Initially, he had hoped to ask Sharon to formalize their relationship ahead of this day. But in the preceding days, Sharon was always too busy to take his call or meet with him. His hope at this moment was to broach the subject before this evening was through. When the transport made its physical connection with a docking port of the Amaterasu Sawyer spoke up with a hint of desperation in his voice.

“Sharon, I need to ask you something.”

“Okay,” Sharon agreed with a large smile. “But let’s wait until we get out of here.” 

Sharon launched herself towards the passenger compartment exit without waiting for a reply. Sawyer had to brush past a couple of people to keep up with her.

“I hate waiting for everyone else to leave, don’t you?” Sharon whispered back to Sawyer after jockeying her way to the front of the line at the door.

Sawyer gave an unconvincing “Yeah,” with a slight nod of his head in response.

There were fifty-seven passengers aboard the transport craft that was bringing Sawyer and Sharon back to the Amaterasu. Most were still seated when Sharon positioned herself in front of the passenger compartment exit. Thirty seconds after her arrival there, the transport pilot stepped out of his cabin and opened the passenger compartment exit. Sharon was the first person to float through the open doorway and into the transit tube on the other side. Sawyer followed behind her. They floated headlong through the tube at a hurried pace. Ten seconds later they came out into a transport pod bay. Sharon floated over to the nearest pod door and touched the control panel to summon a pod. After this, she turned about with a smile and faced Sawyer.

“I had so much fun today,” Sharon gushed with a slightly excited shake of her head. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“I wanted to,” Sawyer eagerly assured as he grasped the handhold on the opposite side of the transport pod door.

Sharon took a second to conspicuously note that Sawyer intended to travel in the same pod with her. At the end of this time, she asked a question with a hint of surprise in her tone.

“Aren’t you going to get a pod?”

“I want to ask you something,” Sawyer explained defensively. “I thought we could talk in the pod.”

It was not uncommon for couples to separate at the transport pod bays when they were traveling home. There was no part of the habitat that was not within walking distance of a transport pod bay and crime was virtually nonexistent. Escorting dates to their front door was regarded as an unnecessary practice aboard a starship. The primary reason spacers had for sharing a pod was convenience. Filling up the pods was the quickest way of dispersing a large crowd. Sharing a pod also had the advantage of enabling acquaintances to prolong their conversations before separating. Sawyer assumed the latter was applicable in this situation.

“Oh!” Sharon responded with feigned surprise. “Okay.”

The transport pod arrived almost to the instant that Sharon finished this remark. She and Sawyer floated into the pod and activated it. Ten seconds later the pod began its descent into the starship’s habitat ring. It was in route for the pod bay that was nearest to Sharon’s residence. It did not take long before they began to feel the tug of the habitat ring’s gravity beneath them.

“So, what did you want to ask me?” Sharon questioned in a pleasant voice.

As she said this Sharon began unzipping her way out of the zero-gravity sack that she was in. Visually this lived up to its name. It was essentially a sack that was wide at the bottom and narrow at the top. A zipper went down from the top of the sack to the bottom. The purpose of this was for ease of entry and exit. A tie at the top of the sack made it adjustable to varied waist sides. The design purpose of the zero-gravity sack was concealment. Dresses concealed nothing in zero gravity. Because there was little use for legs in zero gravity sacks came into existence the day after dresses went into space.

“I wanted to know,” Sawyer commenced hesitantly, “if you and I… I mean… if we could be… boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“You mean like going steady?” Sharon inquired with a surprised inflection.

“Yes,” Sawyer quickly confirmed.

“Oh!” Sharon responded with a mixture of delight and shock. “That’s sweet, Sawyer. Thank you for asking. But I don’t date teenage boys anymore. I’m sorry.”

For Sawyer, Sharon’s response hit him like a physically debilitating shock wave. He did not know what to say or do. His fear of rejection had him considering the possibility that Sharon would say no. But he was still unprepared to deal with it emotionally.

“I really appreciate you asking,” Sharon continued with as much sincerity as she could dissemble. “Thank you.”

Sawyer gave his acknowledgment in the form of a brief nod of his head. His mind and his emotions were still struggling to maintain normality in his demeanor. Two seconds after this the pod came to a stop and the door opened. Without hesitation, Sharon stepped out of it and looked back at Sawyer with a pleasant expression before speaking again.

“Thank you, Sawyer. I really had a wonderful time.”

Two seconds after Sharon stepped away, the pod door closed, and a stunned Sawyer was on his way home.


	19. The Day After

Sawyer spent much of the night after the award ceremony examining everything that transpired over the past two weeks that pertained to Sharon. He could not help but entertain the thought that she had exploited his attraction to her to get what she wanted, an invite to the ceremony. Despite this suspicion, he could not despise her for it. His mind kept trying to find a stratagem that might win for him her affections. His intellect tried to steer away from this thinking, but it only managed to produce disapproval for the effort. He could do nothing to stop it.

It was after eight o’clock in the morning when Sawyer climbed out of bed. This was a late start for him. He usually started his day between five and six in the morning. There was no particular reason for these early starts on his days off from school. Normally he had no activities scheduled for these days. His usual practice on days when he had nothing to do had been to spend much of it within the sports and recreation complexes aboard the Amaterasu. He had every intention of doing the same on this day. He was simply off to a late start.

On this morning, Sawyer’s mind was too preoccupied with thoughts about the night before to create definite plans for the day. He gave little attention to anything that turned his thoughts away from Sharon. He stumbled his way through the morning out of habit more so than design. Shortly before two o’clock that afternoon, Sawyer strolled into the Amaterasu Arcade Center for the first time that day. The place was nearly filled with people. All fifty-seven game pods had a player inside. Sawyer meandered through the arcade as he looked left and right for his friends. A few minutes into his search he spotted Anthony waiting outside of an arcade game. He was watching the play of a gamer inside the pod via the large monitor affixed to the outside of it. As he turned and started to move towards him, he noted Martin and Rebecca waiting there as well. After a few steps, he saw Oscar and CC waiting and watching outside of a neighboring game pod. Rebecca was the first to notice that he had arrived. She turned towards him with an excited expression and blurted out her greeting with equal enthusiasm.

“Hi, Sawyer!”

Sawyer returned her greeting with a modest “hi.” As he said this, Martin and Anthony were calling out their greetings. Oscar detached his attention from the monitor he was watching when he heard the welcome calls to Sawyer. A second after that he set off to greet his friend. CC was the only member of the group to appear uninterested in speaking with Sawyer. She noted him with a brief look of disapproval, and then she turned her attention back towards the game monitor.

“How was the awards ceremony?” Rebecca spoke as Sawyer navigated his way between half a dozen people to reach her.

“It was okay,” Sawyer reported with a lack of enthusiasm.

Nearly all the game pods had people waiting outside for a chance to play them. Most had a minimum of one player waiting to get in. Seven of the most popular games had between five and ten individuals waiting outside of them. Rebecca, Martin, CC, Anthony, and Oscar were waiting outside of two of these. The two games were identical and the number of people waiting for access to them was nearly equal. Oscar and CC split away from the others to shorten their wait time.

Every new gamer had to make a reservation to gain access to a game pod. This was done by touching their com-link to the game pod’s external control panel. The control panel recorded the identity of this person. If the game pod was occupied, then the control panel would put this person in the queue behind anyone else that may have made a reservation ahead of him or her. When their turn came up, the control panel would notify that person via an alert on his or her com-link. That person would then have one minute to take possession of the game pod. If he or she failed to do this, the control panel would discard that person’s reservation and the next person in the queue would be alerted.

“So, who was there,” Rebecca challenged in an excited voice. “What did you see?”

“Forget that,” Anthony directed with an emphatic tone. “What happened with Sharon?”

Martin showed his agreement to this inquiry with a “yeah” and a grin. Oscar arrived in time to support Anthony and Martin by asking a question of his own.

“Did you and Sharon make out?” Oscar said with wide-eyed excitement. “Come on, give us some details.”

Rebecca took an immediate dislike to this line of inquiry and expressed as much with a role of her eyes and a shake of her head. Sawyer exhibited no distaste for the questions. At the same time, he displayed no interest in the subject.

“Nothing happened,” Sawyer declared in a somber voice.

“No, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Anthony argued back in a mocking tone of speech. “She broke up with Joseph and went out with you and nothing happened?”

“She was just my date for the ceremony,” Sawyer countered with a toss of his hand.

“Didn’t you kiss her or ask her to be your girl or anything?” Oscar challenged with an incredulous inflection.

Sawyer had quickly become uncomfortable with this conversation. He hesitated to respond to Oscar’s inquiry. He lowered his gaze and shook his head while his mind searched for an appropriate answer. After a few seconds of this, he spouted out the answer he knew to be the most telling of the situation.

“She doesn’t date teenage boys anymore.”

Oscar, Anthony, Martin and Rebecca were surprised to hear this answer. Oscar cried out a “what!” in response to this report. Anthony bellowed out a “did she really say that” question. Martin exclaimed, almost in a whisper, “what a bitch.” Rebecca was the only member of the four that did not vocalize her surprise. After a few seconds of stunned silence, she turned about and hurried away to CC’s side.

While Rebecca was giving a report to CC on Sawyer’s date with Sharon, Oscar, Anthony and Martin were consoling their friend. They all knew that Sawyer had a deep infatuation for Sharon. They also believed that he, more so than any of them, had a chance of having these feelings returned by her. On top of being Sawyer’s friend, they were all admirers of him. They all wished that they could be as handsome and athletic as he. And they all valued the fact that he was their friend.

It was not long into this consolation that Rebecca came back to the group, gently pulling CC along with her. As soon as she returned Rebecca offered her condolences with a brief statement.

“I’m sorry, Sawyer.”

Sawyer took this with a slight smile and a nod of his head. He then looked to CC and noted that she was not returning his gaze. After two seconds of awkward silence, CC looked up to Sawyer, gave him a phony smile and a terse “hi” before looking away again. Behind this, an awkward silence began to grow between them once again.

They were all aware, to varied degrees, of the feelings that they all held for each other. It was an unspoken awareness, for the most part. Rebecca’s and Martin’s affection for each other was nearly always on public display. When they were not holding hands or each other they were in two separate locations, usually. The bond of friendship between Martin, Oscar, Anthony and Sawyer was strong. Their shared interests and the proximity of their ages made their friendship a natural fit. CC and Rebecca had the same form of bond with each other. Their ages, interests and personalities were the glue that maintained their friendship. But it was Martin’s relationship with Rebecca that bridged CC to the group.

There was no resistance to CC’s association with the group. Other than her sex, Martin, Oscar, Anthony and Sawyer had no discomfort with her membership. The only inconvenience in her presence was the fact that she had turned down respective amorous advances from Oscar and Anthony earlier in their association. After this rebuff, Oscar and Anthony, gradually, adapted to the fact that she was a female member with no romantic designs on anyone in the group. This remained true up until the day that Sawyer joined their number. Shortly into his inclusion, it became apparent to all that CC was infatuated with Sawyer. It was also apparent to all that he did not return this affinity. They all knew this was because of his infatuation with Sharon, and in this they were right.

Sawyer found CC very attractive and was flattered by her affinity for him. But his romantic fantasies were exclusive to Sharon Stewart. He could not imagine dividing these musings among more than one girl. All his spare time for thinking romantic thoughts belonged to Sharon. In his sober thinking, he rationalized that a relationship with CC would be a declaration to others that he was not available. The glances and smiles that Sharon directed his way encouraged him in this thinking. Since their first meeting Sawyer held his desire for her above all others of the opposite sex. This was the first time that he no longer thought himself obliged to consider Sharon before thinking of another girl. However, at this moment his romantic inclinations were on hold to give time to his despondency.

“Hey Dude, come on,” Oscar exclaimed loudly after a moment of silence. “Let’s get into one of these games.”

Oscar’s encouragement incited jubilant agreements from the others, minus Sawyer and CC. Anthony threw an arm over Sawyer’s shoulder and began to steer him towards the game pod that he was attending to.

“Yeah man,” Anthony rallied as he walked Sawyer toward the pods. “You need to get back into Physalia. Yesterday that N. Lazaro person beat your average score. You’re now number four.”

Sawyer had no enthusiasm for playing arcade games. His sole reason for coming to the center was to be with his friends. Despite this, he knew that he would end up playing several of the games before the day was done. The insistence of the others was predictable. They maintained an ongoing contest between them within seven separate games.

Physalia was the most popular game in the arcade. Sawyer enjoyed it immensely and played it near to the exclusion of all others. This devotion to it partially explained his high ranking. Out of more than five hundred participants across the five RG01 starships, Sawyer managed to hold on to a top ten ranking for the whole of the past year. The other reason for his high ranking was simply because he was very good at it.

Within their group, Sawyer was not alone in his Physalia playing excellence. Oscar and CC maintained a constant presence within the top ten to twenty range. Martin and Anthony were regularly somewhere within the top twenty to forty range. And Rebecca’s ranking fluctuated within the top thirty to fifty. This game more so than any other in the arcade bonded them together. Where other games held the interest of only one or two of them, Physalia held the interest of all six. This was true for Sawyer most of all. It was Oscar’s hope that his fall from third to fourth place in the ranking would awaken his fascination for the game and distract him from thoughts of Sharon.

“Come on, guy,” Oscar admonished in a mocking tone. “You’re going to break up the Big Three.”

The Big Three was the moniker that Oscar assigned to himself, Sawyer and CC. It pertained to their repetitive rankings in the top ten of Physalia game scores.

Sawyer accepted the encouragement of the others and picked up the challenge. He chased his lost ranking through five plays of the game. Oscar, Anthony, Rebecca and Martin cheered him on in this effort. But this they did to no avail. Thoughts of Sharon took a heavy toll on his game. Five days later his average score was no longer in the top ten. It took him another month to move back into it. It took another three months beyond that to best N. Lazaro’s average.


	20. Developments and Responses

Eric Pettorino had no idea why Joshua summoned for him with such short notice. This question gave him cause to be a little concerned. He had been summoned to meetings by Joshua on previous occasions, but a future time and date accompanied these. This summons demanded his immediate appearance. Never had he been ordered to drop everything and come to his office. Normally, Joshua would call or come to him when he was in a hurry. The more Eric thought about this the more convinced he became that there was something important about this meeting.

Eric Pettorino was Joshua’s Director of Human Systems for the mows. He was chosen for this position because people in this industry considered him to be the foremost authority on human/machine interface technology. He and his team had accomplished much in defining the mow’s overall cockpit design and its operating system. The only thing that was preventing him from putting the stamp of completion on this task was the ongoing development of the mow. The spacefighter was an unproven work of science speculation, for the most part. There were many components that had to be engineered to work seamlessly with other components. The mow was a twenty-second-century version of a skunkworks project, with one difference. It needed to work on its first trip out of the factory. Eric had never worked on a project where the overall mechanics was not already designed and proven. But it was this aspect of it, coupled with the secrecy, which made it so exciting for him.

“They’re in the conference room,” the receptionist instructed with a point.

Eric was well aware of the location of the conference room. He immediately turned himself towards it and took off at a quick pace. As he did this, his mind gave thought the fact that the receptionist said that they were in the conference room. At this moment, he concluded that this meeting was not about him specifically or the task he was performing. The presence of others reinforced his suspicion that something big had occurred.

All the other Division Heads of the Titan Project were in the conference room when Eric entered. He was the last to arrive, minus Joshua. All of them were seated and questioning each other about the reason behind this meeting. They had heard rumors about political changes on Earth. But no one knew for sure if these changes were the cause of this meeting.

Eric took a seat at the table and joined in on the discussion. His contribution was more inquiry than knowledge. The events happening on Earth was something he knew little about. His knowledge of computers and robotics was almost second nature for him. Eric had little interest in serious matters.

“Hello everyone,” Joshua announced as he stormed into the room.

The division heads murmured their hellos back as Joshua hurried to the head of the conference table and took a stance. He then went into his address without pausing to scan the faces seated in front of him

“There have been some new developments on Earth,” Joshua began with a stern expression. “As some of you may already know, the Prime Minister of Thames resigned from office and relocated to MPT01UTC2153. That was seven days-ago.”

Joshua took a pause after this statement to give time for the magnitude of his words to sink in. After several seconds, Linda, the division head of space-plane development, spoke up with a confused expression.

“There’s nothing new with that. Earth politicians have been relocating into Starcorps for decades.”

“This is not some long forgotten retired politician,” Joshua asserted an instant behind. “This is—was—the sitting Prime Minister of Thames. Nothing smacks of betrayal like a sitting Earth politician taking favors from the enemy. And in the eyes of most Earthers, we are the enemy.”

There was silence for several seconds as everyone considered Joshua’s words. At the end of this Dan, the division head of support vehicles development asked a direct question in a soft tone of voice.

“So, what does this mean?”

Joshua wasted little time in responding to this. After a brief scan of the faces in front of him, he commenced with his response.

“Five days-ago the Prime Minister of the Alberta Alliance made a televised call for all Earth States to sign onto his United Front Pact. Within twenty-four hours almost half of the Independent States of Earth had signed on. As of now, more than two-thirds of the Independent States of Earth are signatories to that pact.”

Joshua hesitated briefly to emphasize this remark and then he began to speak again with a somber delivery. All others in the room were confused by this silence. None of them knew what to make of this event. After noting their bewilderment Joshua continued with his report.

“The United Front Pact states are drafting a resolution that will demand that we, the starcorps, compensate Earth monetarily for more than one-hundred years of use and development of equipment and resources that they say belong to them.”

Immediately after this report a murmur of voices resonated out from Joshua’s audience. All of them were expressing their shock that this was happening. Several seconds into this, a voice spoke over the din of the crowd with a question.

“How much compensation do they want?” Barbara, the division head of project integration management, queried with an inflection of concern.

“We don’t know that yet,” Joshua gently explained with a shake of his head. “But it’s bound to be too much.”

“How do you know that?” Chris, the division head of hull systems, boomed out.

“Because Eckhart doesn’t want compensation,” Joshua answered back an instant behind. “Eckhart wants a war.”

“Who’s Eckhart?” Barbara sharply questioned with a puzzled expression.

“Edward Eckhart,” Joshua reported with a quick focus on Barbara. “The Prime Minister of the Alberta Alliance.”

The fact that Barbara did not know who Eckhart was caught Joshua by surprise. He assumed that everyone there knew of Eckhart, and this was true for all except Barbara. Nonetheless, it was Barbara’s ignorance of him that caused Joshua to think that the others were not aware of Eckhart’s significance in these events. After the two seconds it took for him to come to this reasoning, Joshua began to explain just that.

“Edward Eckhart is now the most powerful political figure on Earth, and he is also our greatest enemy. He hates starcorps with a passion. This action by Hagerman and this United Front Pact has given him unparalleled influence over Earth’s relationship with the starcorps. He is the force behind this compensation resolution. And I can guarantee you that whatever figure he comes up with, it’s going to be more than we’re willing to pay.”

“So, what you’re saying is that this war is really going to happen,” Eric annunciated in a plain tone of voice.

Joshua focused his attention on to Eric for a moment as he pondered his question. He then turned his eyes to the room in general as he spoke his reply.

“I have received orders to get this war machine up and running now.”

Joshua hesitated to give weight to this statement. When he spoke again, he did so with a far greater emphasis in his expression.

“I need all of you to bring your projects to a completion within the next three months.”

There were gasps and murmurs of shock in response to this. Before anyone could think to question it, Joshua spoke again.

“I want to commence full-scale production on the mows within six months. I want the basestar operational within a year’s time. If you can’t get something to work the way you want it to, then figure out a compromise.”

Joshua paused again and scanned the faces in front of him to give weight to his words. At the end of this, he continued with his instructions with the same gravitas as before.

“Time has run out people. Get it done.”

It took the heads of the divisions a moment to comprehend that Joshua was done talking. When this became plain to them, they all got up from their chairs and set off for the exit without delay. Just before Eric could reach the door, he heard Joshua called out to him. He turned back and stopped in front of the Director of the Titan Project.

“Yes,” Eric responded with a questioning look.

“We need to start pilot training,” Joshua instructed with an inflection of urgency. “How many trainers do you have?”

“The trainers that are in operation don’t have the latest upgrades installed,” Eric reported with a slight shake of his head. “I was planning to start building those in another couple of weeks.”

Joshua was not fazed by this report. He took it in quickly and responded to it with just as much expediency.

“How many?”

“Twenty,” Eric answered in a word.

Once again Joshua showed no reaction to the answer to his query. He simply took it in with a fixed stare and spat out a terse reply an instant behind.

“Make one-hundred more.”


	21. Ploys, Plots and Preparations

“I asked all of you here because I wanted you to be the first to see this,” Eckhart explained in a pleasant delivery.

The eight men seated in Edward Eckhart’s study were the heads of their respective governments. Out of the ninety-seven United Front member states, their nine states represented thirty percent of their combined industrial might. The eight leaders were perusing through documents in file folders that were assembled just for them. Each of them examined the documents inside with great interest in what was written on them.

“This is too much,” Chrisfield insisted. “They will never agree to this."

Trent Chrisfield’s affinity for the starcorps was well known by all. His only reason for signing the United Front Pact was to appease the political pressure he was getting from his constituents and their representatives.

“They’re not supposed to,” James Repasky gruffly corrected.

Repasky’s hatred for the starcorps exceeded Eckhart’s animosity for them. But this was achieved with less provocation. Antipathy was Repasky’s default disposition towards anyone new. This feeling invariably expanded to hate if he perceived this person or persons to be in opposition in with him.

Seth Jacobson had no love for the starcorps either, but he, unlike Repasky, was willing to overlook much if it reinforced his political career and added to his personal wealth. Repasky’s nonsensical remark was quick to annoy him. This was due to a desperate need to know what position he should take in this. He was quick to put a question to Repasky that he was counting on to give him this clarification.

“What does that mean?” 

“We should be demanding their repatriation with Earth,” Repasky continued without consideration for Jacobson’s question.

“We might as well declare ourselves at war with the starcorps behind a resolution like that.” Paul Quillin retaliated without hesitation.

Quillin had no dislike for the starcorps, but he was always careful not to show this. Few people knew of his true inclinations towards them. This fact was a testimony to his adeptness as a politician. His signing onto the United Front Pact was simply the act of a politician that was trying to hold on to his constituents’ favor. However, he was keenly aware that this anti-starcorp movement could go too far. The last thing he wanted to be blamed for was a sudden downfall in the fortunes of his state, and he had no doubt that a violent conflict with starcorps would bring about some extreme hardship.

“How would we divide up all of this off-world property?” Jacobson queried with cunning. “Who gets what? We’d likely ignite wars between ourselves.”

Jacobson anticipated that this point would make apparent to everyone the inherent flaw in this line of thinking. The others did not miss its validity, but they were reluctant to say so.

“No, there doesn’t have to be a war,” Repasky argued after a pause. “We can come to an agreement.”

Repasky’s thinking was not misunderstood by anyone there. They knew he was talking about standing together and forcing the starcorps to come to terms with them. This was a regular theme of his. However, the others, minus Eckhart, were dubious that the states could come to an agreement about the division of the property and wealth of the starcorps among the states of Earth. Jacobson was the first to vocalize this doubt, and he did so in no uncertain terms.

“In your dreams, maybe…”

“It doesn’t matter,” Quillin interceded ahead of a Repasky response. “The starcorps will fight.”

“Then we fight,” Repasky returned with heated vigor.

“A bombardment from space would destroy us,” Quillin insisted in his retort. “We dare not threaten the existence of the starcorps. We don’t know how they will react.”

This statement was an echo of an argument that had been made several thousand times over the past century and in every capital around the world. In these past arguments, no one disputed this conclusion. They all knew that the post-Third World War Earth was incapable of defending itself against an attack from space. Their numerical advantage afforded them no defense against a relatively minuscule force of military spaceplanes in Earth orbit. The politically fragmented planet lacked the ability to extend its might into Earth space to any substantial degree. It was this weakness, above all others, that perpetuated the starcorps authoritarian footing.

“I agree,” Shin Lin declared resolutely. “Eckhart, we need to bring this down to a reasonable number. We have an opportunity here. We have leverage. The starcorps will make concessions to us if we make our demands realistic.”

Shin had been reluctant to express his views ahead of knowing what the others were thinking. It was his nature to learn the plans and gauge the disposition of others before revealing his own. He was still unsure where Eckhart was going with this. But he was convinced at that moment that he was plotting to go far beyond what was prudent.

“Realistic!” Eckhart challenged in a word. “The starcorps spent the past hundred years getting fat off equipment and resources that belong to the people of Earth. To ask for less would be a concession.”

“We have benefitted from their success,” Chrisfield argued back. “Without the starcorps, a billion more people would have died within the first three years after the war. And god knows how many more between then and now.”

“And how many more could they have saved if they weren’t devoting the bulk of those resources to their own comfort?” Eckhart questioned an instant behind.

It was this argument, more so than any other, that propelled anti-starcorp animosity. There were many on the Earth that believed that all the resources of the starcorps should have been directed towards Earth’s relief. This position was held more fiercely by those that had suffered the most.

“When the starcorps broke away from Earth they began to grow and prosper,” Chrisfield defended. “If they hadn’t have done that Earth’s geopolitical strife could very well have brought the industrialization of space to a halt.”

“That’s their justification,” Eckhart responded calmly. “And I don’t believe it for a minute. We would have come together to make it work.”

“At best, we would have stripped the starcorps down to off world factories that did nothing but produce survival rations for Earth,” Chrisfield disputed with a shake of his head. “Growth…, expansion—the economic boom that they experienced after their separation from Earth authority—none of this would have happened. I know you hate the starcorps, Eckhart. I have no love for them either. But we need to be reasonable. We are not without some debt to them.”

“We owe them nothing,” Eckhart roared back.

“I agree,” Repasky supported, strongly. “Everything they did for the Earth they were obliged to do. We shouldn’t be making excuses for them. They—owe—us! We have no debt to them.”

“But this,” Chrisfield challenged with a shocked expression. “This is outrageous.”

“I’m in agreement with Chrisfield,” Shin declared in a passive tone of speech. “We have to make this more palatable to them if we’re going to do it all.”

“We have to draft some sort of resolution that the starcorps will at least consider,” Bessinger spoke out as though he was saying the obvious. “We’re all on record as supporters of this.”

Darryl Bessinger was almost indifferent to this entire debate. He neither favored nor hated the starcorps. To him, they were simply a reality of the times. All the events that were swirling around him were either a political asset or liability that he had to negotiate his way around or through. He took nothing personally.

“This is way over the top, Eckhart,” Herzfeld offered behind Bessinger’s comment. “We have to be smarter than this.”

For Alan Herzfeld, everything that affected his political standing was personal. He did not take threats to his political wellbeing lightly, and he was capable of being unscrupulous in his method of dealing with them.

“I agree with you, Eckhart,” Wegener spoke up softly. “They should pay us what they owe us.”

Karl Wegener was nothing if not the ultimate political opportunist. When it came to risky political positions, he was notorious for remaining noncommittal until the last moment, and he regularly chose the winning side when he did. The only exception to this was when there was an upside to being on the losing side. This was just such an occasion. He agreed with what Chrisfield and Shin were saying, but he knew that Eckhart was a potential threat to him. He could see that Eckhart was about to lose this debate and the winners would, in turn, lose his support. By Wegener’s reasoning, this was the safest position to take.

"I'm not signing my name to this, Eckhart,” Chrisfield insisted with a definitive expression.

"Neither will I," Shin declared a second behind.

Chrisfield sat forward in his chair and gave Eckhart a stern look before emphasizing his refusal with a final remark.

"You have to see, Eckhart, this is never going to get the votes in a general assembly that it needs to be adopted."

Chrisfield was confident that most of the signees to the United Front Pact would follow the lead of the majority in this room. And he had no doubt that he and Shin had that majority. Eckhart was aware of this too. It was for this reason that he invited the eight of them there. It was his intention to win their support at this meeting.

"I do not have to convince a general assembly,” Eckhart explained with a casual delivery. “I only have to convince you. A general assembly will follow our lead."

"I’m telling you, Eckhart,” Chrisfield countered with more defiance. “We won't agree to this."

Eckhart appeared unaffected by Chrisfield’s declaration. After a pause to examine the eight faces that were looking at him, Eckhart retrieved a stack of papers from the interior of a file folder that was situated on the end table next to him. He calmly separated them into two stacks and extended them to the person seated to his immediate left and right. Quillin and Herzfeld took the papers, noted that they were identical and extended the copies to the person seated to the side opposite to Eckhart.

"What's this?" Chrisfield inquired as he took the paper.

"That is a report that was given to me by my Minister of Defense," Eckhart reported with a point.

For nearly a minute, the group read the report in their hands without speaking a word. It was Repasky that broke the silence with a gruffly spoken declarative.

"This is incredible."

What Repasky was declaring to be incredible was a one-page report on starcorp RG01. Everyone, there was aware of this newest starcorp. Its distant location was enough to give it notoriety among the heads of states on Earth. The official report that they received from BX01 regarding it was that RG01 was a spacecraft manufacturing plant that moonlighted as a Titan exploratory expedition. This made little sense to anyone that understood the logistics of space industries. It was commonly known that location was paramount when it came to large space factories. This is why all the other starcorp manufacturing plants were situated close to their greatest source of raw material, the asteroid belt. And since all starcorps were both merchant and patron to each other they consistently remained relatively close together. It was also well known that exploratory missions were conducted by spaceships. This was due to the enormous expense associated with sustaining the populace of a single starship.

Despite this deviation from the norm, few people on Earth gave any attention to this distant starcorp. However, this disinterest did not extend into space. The inhabitants of the starcorps were slow in their suspicions about this distant enterprise. But the quantity of people intrigued with it increased exponentially each year out from the first day of its conception. Nearly all the intelligence that Eckhart acquired came from casual conversations with starcorp personnel.

"This is conjecture," Chrisfield disputed a second behind as he flagged the paper in front of him.

Chrisfield was referring to the hearsay nature of the report and the absences of any verified evidence.

"Do you have a better explanation for what's going on out there?" Eckhart challenged softly.

Chrisfield had no ready response for this question. He knew, just as well as the others, that this starcorp had not made any sense until that moment. His hesitance was all that the others needed to give weight to Eckhart's allegation. They all lowered their papers and looked to Eckhart with mildly astounded expression.

"The starcorps have no need to build a large space force," Chrisfield argued after a brief silence. "They could easily render us militarily impotent with a first strike surprise bombardment from a small force of military spaceplanes. We have nothing in orbit to give us sufficient warning of an attack like that."

"I have to agree with that," Quillin supported with a flag of his hand. “A military buildup is unnecessary.”

"Then explain to me what this phantom starcorp around Titan is doing?" Repasky waved the report in front of him as he argued back with a look of incredulity.

"Just because we don’t know what RG01 is about that does not make this any less speculative," Chrisfield countered with a shake of his head.

“This speculation fits like a glove,” Eckhart fired back.

"Just the same, it’s inconclusive," Chrisfield insisted.

“The starcorps are engaged in a secret military buildup,” Eckhart retorted angrily. “There is no other explanation for the investment of so much money, material and manpower into an enterprise that has not produced any goods since its inception three years earlier.”

The logic in Eckhart’s remark was beyond the thinking of anyone there to challenge. For several seconds, they reflected inward on this idea that the starcorps were arming themselves for war with Earth. At the end of this time, Wegener spoke up with a question.

“But why Titan?”

"I'll tell you why," Eckhart spoke up calmly. "To keep it hidden from their own people. Because that’s the only way to keep it hidden from us.”

“Well, according to this,” Jacobson announced as he flagged his report over his head. “This is too much work for a bombing raid.”

“Their plan is not to bomb us,” Eckhart lectured with a glance about the room. “They don't want to go back to a post-Third World War situation. Their plan is to control us."

“You’re talking about an invasion,” Herzfeld surmised.

“Yes, that’s it,” Repasky insisted loudly. “They have to be constructing drop-ships, armored transports and whatever else they would need to support an incursion into Earth atmosphere. What else could they be doing?”

“This is all guesswork,” Chrisfield disputed with a wave of his hand.

“An invasion is the only thing that makes sense,” Repasky argued defensively. “They destroy our ground forces, bases and ports with a bombardment from space. And then they send in their ground forces in to secure the capitals.”

Everyone there understood the argument that Eckhart and Repasky were making. A war of annihilation would be a simple and cheap act for the starcorps to perform. A war of conquest would be decidedly more complex and expensive. This argument was a viable explanation for a secret military installation. This was made even more valid by the fact that the States of Earth had no appreciable space force capable of threatening the starcorps.

“Precisely,” Eckhart supported an instant behind. “And if we’re going to prevent this from happening, then we’re going to need the means to take the fight to them—in space.”

“You’re talking about building up our own Space Forces,” Bessinger stated blandly.

“If we did that he starcorps will see us as a threat,” Quillin pointed out with a slight shake of his head.

“They already see us as a threat,” Repasky promptly corrected.

“This resolution of yours, Eckhart, is beginning to look more and more like a pretext for war.” Herzfeld pondered aloud with an inquisitive expression.

Eckhart took some offense to the accusation that he was pushing for war, but he kept this emotion in check, for the most part. After a hesitation, he looked towards Herzfeld with a slight scowl and gave his reply with a stern delivery.

“This resolution is our common cause. We need this to unite us.”

“This resolution may very well provoke the starcorps into attacking us,” Shin insisted.

“They won’t attack until they’re ready,” Eckhart countered. “And that report suggests that they won’t be ready for a further two years.”

Eckhart was referring to reports, from multiple sources, of orders and timetables that extended two years into the future.

“And what do you think they will do between now and then if we hit them with this resolution?” Quillin challenged.

“They will argue—they will negotiate, but that’s about it,” Eckhart predicted with a shrug. “They won’t attack us as long as they believe that we’re not a military threat.”

“I have no military experience, but I do believe a sudden buildup in weapons of war will look very threatening,” Shin retorted with an inflection of sarcasm.

“Not if we keep it a secret from them,” Eckhart countered with a hint of a smile.

Eckhart’s eight guests had mixtures of surprised and confused looks on their faces after hearing this idea from him. It was common knowledge to everyone on Earth, which was capable of mature thinking, that there was little they could keep secret from the starcorps. This perception was fixed into their mindset by the century-long practice of being spied upon from space by the starcorps. There were no large movements that the states could make that the starcorps could not detect from Earth orbit. The starcorps justified their continuous observation of the planet by declaring it a necessary utensil for maintaining peace on the planet. The Earth states had no reason to dispute this since their presence there did just that. No state could launch a surprise attack against another while the starcorps were watching.

“And how do we do that?” Shin questioned back without the sarcasm.

“We do that, President Shin, by taking control of Earth Space,” Eckhart explained in a surprisingly casual manner.

Earth Space was defined as all space around the planet inside of High Earth Orbit. This easily included the orbit of the Moon.

“What makes you think that the starcorps will surrender control of Earth Space to us?” Chrisfield queried with nearly an expression of shock on his face.

All eyes were fixed on Eckhart in anticipation of his answer to that question. He paused to give gravity to the moment and then he spoke his answer with emphasized calm.

"Because they are obliged to."

Everyone in the room knew that Earth Space, along with the moon and all space stations and satellites within it, were the property of the States of Earth. This point was agreed upon by the starcorps when they moved in to manage the Planetary System on the behalf of Earth. This they did shortly after the end of the Third World War. As part of their agreement to take control of all works in the planetary system, the starcorps agreed to surrender same to a United Earth Alliance or an association of one or more Earth Governments representing the majority of the planet’s population.

This agreement came into existence out of necessity. The Earth was in too much disarray politically, socially and economically to manage its affairs in space after the Third World War. This was made all the more problematic by the fact that the states of the newly fragmented world could not agree on who owned what. Eckhart knew that the United Front Pact brought the majority of Earth’s population under a single alliance and that he only needed to get them to agree to a joint plan of ownership. One-hundred years earlier this was a bone of extreme contention. Eckhart and the others in his study knew that this would probably be a minor issue to negotiate now, under this circumstance.

“Eckhart is right,” Repasky loudly endorsed. “They can’t refuse us. It’s in the agreement.”

It was already known to everyone there that the starcorps were obliged to comply with this request from them. They were, as of the signing of the United Front Pact, an alliance that represented most of the Earth’s population. This fact made Eckhart’s military build-up doable if the starcorps complied with the terms of the agreement. But in the back of their minds, there was the concern that the starcorps would not do this. Not if they were truly plotting against them.

“I can’t agree to this,” Chrisfield declared after a pause.

“Nor can I,” Shin supported with a shake of his head. “The starcorps may be developing a military out there, but I don’t believe they’re planning an invasion. But by doing this, we could end up provoking a war.”

“We must normalize our relationship with the starcorps,” Chrisfield stressed as he directed his speech to all within the room. “And to do this, we must produce a resolution that the starcorps can live with. Their obligation to us does not end when we stand up on our feet. The resources—the knowledge—the skill that they have accrued over the past one-hundred plus years are rightfully ours as well, in part. I do not believe that they want a conflict with us. Sure, we have a right to take full control of Earth space, but is that the smart thing to do in the light of this report. Gentlemen, we are at a fork in the road here. If we do what Eckhart wants, the starcorps will likely become distrustful of us. And this could lead to a disastrous end.”

Eckhart was unfazed by Chrisfield’s speech and he showed this in his expression. He took a brief pause to gauge the others. He noted that they had their reservations as well and would likely follow Chrisfield’s and Shin’s lead. At that moment, he came to the realization that he had to win the two of them to his side or lose all. At the end of his measure of the room, Eckhart focused his attention onto Chrisfield with a steely-eyed stare. And then he spoke in a soft, and menacing, tone of voice.

“You do know that if you don’t sign this we will be at odds.”

“We don’t have to be at odds,” Shin countered defensively. “We just have to come up with a softer resolution that we all can agree upon.”

“This is the resolution,” Eckhart dictated in a defiant voice. “I will not compromise on one word of it.”

“Eckhart,” Chrisfield implored with a hint of desperation in his tone. “It’s a lost cause. If we don’t sign on to this resolution, then no one will. You’ve got nothing.”

“Just the same, gentlemen,” Eckhart retorted with an earnest delivery. “I will pursue this resolution and you will pay a penalty for its failure.”

Eckhart paused to give gravity to this statement. However, this was not necessary. Everyone there knew that he carried more clout than all of them combined. The anti-starcorp movement was at a fever pitch since Hagerman’s resignation as the Prime Minister of Thames and his subsequent migration into a starcorp. As the most stalwart leader of the anti-starcorp community, and its most eloquent spokesperson, Eckhart was instantly elevated to the standing of the most powerful person on Earth. Politicians around the world could rise or fall with his approval or disapproval. His coattail enveloped the planet and everyone in this room knew it.

“I anticipate that a large percentage of your constituents will not be pleased by your refusal to support this resolution,” Eckhart continued while directing fierce glances about the room. “And I will make it my mission to end the political career any person in this room that does not sign on to this. And if you think I can’t do it then think about this—How do you think your constituents to act when they learn of this secret starcorp military buildup going on around Titan?”

Eckhart paused to allow that question time to sink into their thoughts. At the end of this period, he made one final comment.

“I will do everything within my power to destroy you.”

For the next thirty seconds, there was silence.


	22. Talk of War

"Good morning."

Wendy's greeting caught Daniel by surprise. He was expecting her to be at work by this time, and he had grown accustomed to seeing very little of his family.

"Hi," Daniel acknowledged as he staggered into the middle of the kitchen.

Daniel was still groggy from his brief night of sleep. It was ten minutes before three in the morning when he returned home from his job. He had not seen the inside of his apartment for four days. He was expected to be in route back to his job by this time the day after next.

"Why aren't you at work?" Daniel questioned ahead of yawn and a stretch.

"I traded my day off," Wendy explained in a soft voice. "I wanted to spend the day with you. We hardly see each other anymore."

"I know," Daniel agreed with a shrug.

Daniel crossed over to the refrigerator, opened it and began searching through its contents for something to drink. Wendy visually followed his movement from her seat at the kitchen island.

"For how much longer is this going to be our lives?" Wendy questioned with a bewildered shake of her head.

Daniel's job went into high gear five months earlier. Everyone involved with the task of making the basestar ready for launch was subject to mandatory overtime. All workers on site were required to spend four days in a row aboard the ship before taking two days off. This arrangement was set up to minimize the commute time and maximize the productivity of the workforce. While on the site they worked six hours on, two hours off, six hours on, ten hours off and then repeated the pattern.

"The basestar is nearly completed," Daniel assured. "There is talk of a launch three months from now."

"Three months?" Wendy questioned with astonishment. "Do they expect you to keep working at this pace for another six more months?"

"I think my job will be completed, at least for the most part, way before then."

Wendy took some comfort from this report, but it was barely noticeable in her expression.

Daniel knew that there was work going on in many other sectors of the basestar that he knew nothing about. Because of this ignorance, he could not estimate on the timeframe for the end of their work. He did know that there was a super rush on for project completion. This was obvious to everyone working and living in RG01. Dozens of rumors about an overall end date for the project were circulating throughout the Starcorp. Talk about external events that might be responsible for this ramped-up effort were equally pervasive.

"What’s happening, Daniel," Wendy queried with a worried expression.

Daniel poured himself a glass of Orangeade as he pondered for the best answer to give to that question. After replacing the pitcher back inside the refrigerator, he turned towards Wendy with a look of reluctance and answered her query.

"I believe that our new relationship with Earth has heightened the sense of urgency in the minds of the Starcorp League."

“But they’ve given Earth Space to the United Front Alliance,” Wendy argued with a hint of hysterics. “Why should the league feel threatened?”

“There is still the matter of the reparations,” Daniel countered after a long swig of his drink. “That still hasn’t been resolved. And that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.”

This was something that Wendy did not want to hear. She had not forgotten the Earth’s compensation demand, but she chose to ignore it. This disposition was motivated by the fact that Earth displayed no reaction to the silence of the starcorps. It was her hope, far more so than a belief, that this issue would be quietly resolved. Daniel’s accusation to the contrary all but dashed this wishful thought.

"So, you think we're going to war over money?" Wendy declared more than questioned with a mixture of shock and anger. "That doesn't make sense. If we fight, everyone loses. They could destroy the very thing they’re fighting over."

"I don't think it will go that far," Daniel suggested in a reassuring voice.

"But you do think there might be a war?" Wendy challenged back.

Daniel did not know how to respond to that. He knew that his wife was terrified by the thought of Earth and the starcorps at war with each other. He did not want to heighten her fear by giving weight to this thinking. He hesitated to answer her query because of this. But his delay was all the answer that Wendy needed.

“I don’t want to die in space,” Wendy implored. “I don’t want our children killed in some stupid war in the middle of space, Daniel. We have to do something to get out of this.”

Daniel noted the restrained hysterics in her plea and was quick to speak up to diminish her fears.

“Honey, no one is going to die,” Daniel assured with as much sincerity as he could project. “The Starcorp League knows what it’s doing.”

“You heard what that man said at the awards ceremony,” Wendy shrieked back at him. “We can’t win.”

“That man is a nobody,” Daniel insisted with vehemence. “Don’t let some doomsday fanatic get into your head.”

Daniel sat down next to his wife and placed his hand on her arm as he spoke again in a soft voice. “We’re okay. We’re going to be okay.”

Wendy calmed herself with a deep breath. Despite this appearance, she took no reassurance from Daniel's Words. She concluded that nothing constructive was going to come from this conversation and elected to put it behind her. Wendy knew that the family's fortunes were thoroughly fixed to the starcorps. Despite her growing regrets for agreeing to their immigration into a starcorp, she understood the other members of her family had none. For her husband and children, their home was a starship adrift in space.

After a moment of silence between them, Wendy got up from her chair and prepared a hot breakfast for her and Daniel. Over The course of the time it took for them to prepare and eat it, she and Daniel avoided talk of Earth and war. Instead, Daniel steered their conversation onto Wendy's work aboard the agricultural ship and held it there for nearly an hour. This was a subject that Wendy always had plenty to say something about. This was a tendency that Daniel was exploiting to keep Wendy preoccupied with happy thoughts. When her catalog of work anecdotes came to an end, Daniel changed the subject by inquiring about their kids.

"They're fine," Wendy reported with a slight shake of her head. "Sometimes it seems as if they're away as often as you are. But they're okay, for the most part."

Daniel responded to this report with a look of bewilderment. He noted in Wendy's expression that she had concerns regarding their children.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel inquired after a moment of thought.

“We barely feel like a family anymore,” Wendy explained while shaking her head in frustration.

“This schedule won’t last forever,” Daniel countered defensively.

“It’s not just your job,” Wendy retorted an instant behind. “It’s everything. It’s this place. It’s this life. The only time our kids come home is when they want a place to sleep. And we can’t even depend on that. This place—this floating tin can has stolen our family.”

Wendy's distraught outburst was surprising to Daniel. He had no idea that his wife had been harboring concerns of this kind. His first thought while hearing this was to speak up in defense of their new lives.

"Our children are safe here," Daniel began to plea. "This is everything we ever wanted for our children."

"Daniel, this place—this life, it's making us obsolete as parents," Wendy countered with a hint of hysteria. "Our children are being raised for us. They've been brainwashed by all of this."

Wendy gestured to everything about her to emphasize her last remark.

"It's good for our children to have lives outside the home," Daniel defended.

“That’s just it, this is not their home,” Wendy returned while gesturing to the apartment. “This ship—this habitat is their home. Our kids only come here when they want to sleep and you can’t always count on that. Daphne is practically living with Benjamin. Sawyer is always out somewhere playing sports or some video game with his friends, and there is no prying Adam away from this top-secret project that he’s involved in. And now you’re gone for days on end. We’re not a family, Daniel. I don’t know what we are now.”

“We are interplanetary pioneers at the genesis of humankind’s space-age,” Daniel advised with an excited expression. “Industry and commerce are no longer tethered to Earth, Wendy. This is the future of human existence and we’re a part of it. The life behind us is obsolete. We owe this to our children and our children’s, children.”

Wendy knew better than to contradict her husband when he was talking like this. Experience told her that an emotional argument would be a poor match against the logic of his thinking. Her resistance to their new lives was based on fear and insecurity. It was her knowledge of this fear that gave her cause to yield to his vision of their future.

“This whole conflict between Earth and the starcorps is going to be resolved with a deal of some kind,” Daniel assured with extreme earnest in his speech. “I promise.”

~~~~~line break~~~~~

“What’s wrong?” Daphne queried with a look of concern.

Benjamin was adrift in his thoughts when Daphne's query registered in his hearing. Changes in his situation at work were much on his mind at this moment. His thoughts were hard at work trying to discern the significance of these changes. He was also factoring into his thinking the events happening on Earth. It was his suspicion that the change in the Earth's political landscape was behind the adjustments in his situation at work over the past several months.  
"There is going to be a change at the academy," Benjamin confessed.  
Benjamin's disconnect from her company was perceived by Daphne as out of the norm. She was far more accustomed to him being attentive and affectionate whenever she was in his apartment. The fact that he was not at this moment gave her reason to be suspicious about these changes at his job.  
"What changes?" Daphne questioned back with a confused expression.  
"I will be leaving the Amaterasu next week," Benjamin reported in a dejected tone. “The entire defense force is relocating onto the basestar.”   
Daphne felt a wave of panic pass through her. The idea of Benjamin relocating off the Amaterasu was frightening enough for her. The idea that he would be living on a warship made it all the more so. His position as a member of RG01's Defense Force kept her on the alert for any indicators that he might be on the verge of being deployed to some location off the Amaterasu. This concern had a tight grip on her thoughts at this moment.  
"I thought they weren’t finished?" Daphne questioned with a hint of panic in her voice.  
"They’re not,” Benjamin insisted in a hurry. “But the habitats are. We’re being assigned to our fighter wings. The force is to continue its training aboard the basestar. I don't know how often I will be able to return here when that happens."   
Benjamin's answer did nothing to alleviate Daphne's concerns. Her worry that she might lose him because of this conflict with Earth doubled at that moment. She wanted to be with him always. At this moment, their single status was an unbearable hindrance for her to endure. She knew that their unauthorized relationship would give her no rights to be with him or to be kept informed about his status.

“We have to get married now,” Daphne implored with a mournful expression.

“Daphne,” Benjamin began an instant behind. “We’ve already talked about this. This is the best way.”

“If it’s going to separate us then no it’s not,” Daphne argued back.

The realization that this was happening made all their past agreements invalid for Daphne. What made Benjamin’s reassignment even more frightening for her were the rapid changes occurring on Earth. She, like all other spacers, was paying close attention to any news coming from the planet. The shift in the political landscape there was the number one topic of conversation in Sol System. The speculation on a possible war with Earth carried a lot more weight with Daphne at that moment. And the thought of being separated from Benjamin for any period had suddenly become unacceptable.

"I'm afraid," Daphne reported with a look that mirrored her words. "I don't want us separated."

Benjamin understood her fears, but he did not agree with them. In his mind, all the things that were happening on Earth and in space were negotiating maneuvers. He could not imagine a way for an actual war to break out between Earth and the starcorps. He saw a military conflict as a counterproductive method for addressing the problem between them. It was his suspicion that each side was developing a posture that they hoped would strengthen their position at the bargaining table.

"I’m just relocating to a neighboring starship," Benjamin assured. "They're not going to keep us apart. Nothing is going to keep us apart."

"You can quit," Daphne suggested with a hopeful expression.

"No," Benjamin responded an instant behind. "This is an opportunity of a lifetime. If they deploy us into a designated war zone, then I'll start getting hazardous duty pay."

Daphne’s reaction to his words came in the form of an expression of dread. This was due to the sound of zeal in his speech. Daphne noted this excitement in his voice every time he hinted about the novelty of his fighter pilot training. She knew that the prospect of being an RG01 Defense Force Spacefighter Pilot was thrilling to him.

“I know,” Daphne roared back with an inflection of hysterics. “And if they send you into battle you get combat pay. Is that what you want?”

Benjamin did not know what the correct answer to that question was. As events drew forward towards their fate exhilaration began to build within him. His growing excitement with the idea of being a part of some great adventure was accompanied only by his fear of it. But his fear was minute by comparison. The thought of him being killed or injured was a distant worry. This was minimized more by his thinking that a war was highly unlikely. After a second of thought, he fastened together an answer that he thought would best serve him at this moment.

“Baby, they’re just posturing,” Benjamin reassured.

“But they’re training hundreds of pilots to operate those spacefighters that they’re building out there,” Daphne countered. “Why would they do that if they’re not planning for a war?”

“It’s a precaution,” Benjamin returned in a conciliatory voice.

“But it can happen,” Daphne argued back.

“Yes, I suppose it could happen,” Benjamin agreed after a moment of consideration.

“And you won’t quit, will you?” Daphne challenged.

Benjamin gave this question several seconds of thought. By the end of this time, he conceded that there was only one honest answer he could give to this question. And that is the answer he gave.

“No.”


	23. Thinking Out Loud

“George,” Prime Minister Eckhart spoke up as he looked to his right. “How is our recruitment program going?”

Eckhart chose to start the meeting with a report on their Aerospace Force rebuilding program.

“Prime Minister, our aerospace force recruitment program is way ahead of schedule,” Defense Minister Wilkinson reported without hesitation. “The pace of the training is accelerating. We have no shortage of personnel. In another four months, our number of trained fighter crews will exceed the quantity of spacefighters we’ve been promised.”

“We will have five-hundred spacefighters by then,” the Minister of Industry, Aaron Panetti, reported an instant behind.

“And just how is our space fighter fleet production coming along?” Eckhart questioned with a glance to his left.

Seated to the left of Eckhart was George Wilkinson, his Minister of Defense. Next to him was Aaron Panetti his Minister of Industry and Phillip Brison, his Minister of Finance, in that order. The chair to Eckhart’s immediate right was empty. On the other side of that chair was Peter Carr, Eckhart’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, followed by Ronald Kaplan, his Minister of Public Works and John Lynch, his Minister of Agriculture. The seven of them were seated behind four-fold up banquet tables positioned end on end. The tables were situated on a three-foot-high stage. Eckhart’s aid, Gregory Taylor was seated alone and at the right rear of the stage. The auditorium had five-hundred seats in it. Nearly all the seats in the first four rows were occupied by the leader of a United Front Pact member state.

“Production is on schedule,” Panetti reported blandly. “We have two more plants going online within the month and an additional five will be in operation by the end of the year.”

“And how are our trading partners doing?” Eckhart questioned Carr behind his answer.

Peter Carr, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, reacted to the question with the ease of someone content with the answer he was about to deliver.

“Our partners are working to meet their commitments to us. There are a few states that are struggling to produce the parts and supplies that we need, but it’s nothing serious. As a whole, I calculate that we’re off the pace by five to six months.”

“The Sao Francisco Republic is doing more than struggling,” Ramon Perez blared in forcefully from three rows back in the auditorium. “The loss of food aid from the Starcorps is expanding our famine problem to a scale we haven’t seen in more than fifty years.”

“New South Wales is hurting as well,” Prime Minister Seth Jacobson insisted an instant behind. “We should accept the Mars offer.”

The Mars offer was a plan to transfer ownership of the planet to Earth at the end of ten years from the date the offer is accepted. The Alberta Alliance, and several other United Front Pact states were not prepared to accept the codicil in the agreement that all claims to the starcorps by Earth be dropped. Because the United Front Pact states were required to act as one in their dealings with the starcorps, the offer was declined.

“That is not an option,” Eckhart insisted with vehemence. “The United Front Pact members will not be doing business with the Starcorps until they agree to our reparation demands.”

“Eckhart, this makes no sense,” the President of Appalachia; Trent Chrisfield, disputed. “The people are starting to riot in the streets.”

“The Mars offer was more than generous,” the Prime Minister of Leinster; Leslie Butler, supported. “We could’ve taken charge of our destiny. Earth would have been a decade away from being self-reliant.”

“You’re quarreling over scraps when we can have it all,” Eckhart fired back.

“Where are you going with this, Eckhart?” Chrisfield questioned with authority.

“The Starcorps are the property of the people of Earth,” the Prime Minister of Cascadia; James Repasky asserted. “Once we've developed our space forces, we can take whatever we want.”

“I thought the creation of space forces was just saber-rattling,” the President of the Chihli Republic; Shin Lin questioned from the front row.

“The Spacers need to believe that we mean business,” Eckhart explained in a conciliatory tone.

“No one is taking anything,” Renaud Duval, the President of Languedoc, injected. “The spacers are not prepared to die rather than re-incorporate with Earth.”

Karl Wegener, the Chancellor of Niedersachsen, took exception to this presumption and promptly challenged it.

“But what if they are prepared to fight? Do we go to war with them?”

“If we get into a fight with the starcorps they just might demolish the Mars Agro Project,” Shin Lin supported.

“And if that does happen, we will all be out of a job,” Chrisfield stated flatly.

The Mars Agro Project was there to service Earth, for the most part. The population of the Starcorps was small enough to subsist on their agricultural starships. All the heads of states of Earth, at one time or another, entertained the thought that the starcorps might destroy the Martian agro habitats in response to a declaration of war from them.

“The voters will be screaming for our heads on a platter if that happens.” Wegener declared loudly.

“Eckhart, this is only going to get worse as time goes on,” the Prime Minister of Western Australia; Alan Herzfeld annunciated soberly. “We have to negotiate a deal with the starcorps that they will accept.”

“The starcorps won’t destroy the Mars Agro Habitats,” Eckhart stated dismissively.

“Why not?” Chrisfield asked sternly.

Eckhart panned the room to give all the heads of state a brief wary look before responding.

“The starcorps are preparing for war.”

This report was a surprise to the leaders of the various States that Eckhart was facing. They all began to look at each other with expressions of confusions. Several seconds later Chrisfield asked the question that they all were thinking.

“How do you know that?”

After a pause to consider the question Eckhart answered it.

“We have intelligence that starcorp RG01 has assembled a starship size spaceship in Saturn space. We also know that this spaceship is affixed with heavy armaments.”

“You know this,” Chrisfield stated with a questioning inflection.

“Our intelligence is coming from several assets,” Eckhart reinforced in a confident tone. “We also know that the Spacers have been making extensive upgrades to all of their starships and star-factories across the entire starcorp community.”

Eckhart paused again to note the expressions on the faces of all before him. At the end of this, he made a stern and direct statement.

“The starcorps are building a war machine.”

“You can’t be sure of that. These upgrades could be benign,” the President of New California; Paul Quillin, retorted with a hint of desperation in his voice.

“The spaceship being constructed around Saturn is not benign,” Minister Wilkinson countered as quick as he could. “There is too much secrecy around this starship—Its designation is unknown, the reason behind its construction is unknown. We don’t even know who is supplying the parts. Our assets have not been able to find a single piece of documentation concerning this ship. But we know that it’s there. It’s nearly common knowledge throughout the Spacer community.”

“Then why are we just now learning about it?” Shin Lin questioned with a furrowed brow.

“We did know. Up until now it was just another starcorp doing what starcorps do. No one, not even the Spacers, imagined that they were out there preparing for war,” Eckhart answered back decisively. “And that’s exactly why they’re doing it in Saturn space.”

“You think that they’re going to attack us?” Herzfeld questioned with a look of surprise.

“This project has been going on for the past four years now,” Eckhart explained calmly. “This is a big expenditure. They’re not building this ship just to look at it.”

“This is insane,” Chrisfield challenged. “If the starcorps wanted to attack us they could have done it a long time ago.”

“They should have done it a long time ago,” Eckhart corrected with ferocity. “That was their mistake.”

“And what does that mean?” Shin Lin queried with a start.

“It means they missed their chance and we need to take advantage of that,” Eckhart returned forcefully.

“Wait a minute,” Butler spoke up with an inflection of dread. “This is just another reason why we should be negotiating with the starcorps.”

“No,” Eckhart roared back. “Their war machine will be no match for our combined space forces. We have the advantage. This is our chance.”

The phrase combined space forces gave everyone reason to pause. Up until this moment, no one had spoken of combining forces. Chrisfield was the first to speak up behind Eckhart’s assertion.

“What are you planning, Eckhart?”

Eckhart gave a moment’s thought to the appropriate answer to this question. At the end of this time, he turned his attention to his personal assistant seated behind and to his right. He gave him a three-word command, “bring him in.” He then turned forward to face the auditorium full of state leaders. A uniformed Alberta Alliance Aerospace Force Officer entered the auditorium through a stage door a few seconds later.

General Walter Gruenberg stood six-foot-one-inch in height and had an authoritarian bearing. He was erect in his stance and he held his chin high. This gave him the appearance of looking down at everyone. To many it suggested that he was arrogant and in this they were not entirely wrong. General Gruenberg’s demeanor was the result of a near lifelong preoccupation with perfecting the façade of confidence.

Gruenberg believed that confidence was an essential ingredient for anyone in his chosen profession. He had spent the whole of his adult life either in training for or serving as an officer in the Alberta Alliance Aerospace Force. His father and grandfather served as Aerospace Force Officers before him, but he was the first to achieve the rank of Commander of the Alberta Alliance Space Force. This was a minor achievement by comparison to the rivalry and competition that existed during his grandfather’s time.

Colonel Julian Gruenberg served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Third World War. He commanded a wing of the service. Rising to this position during the height of Canada’s air might was not a small accomplishment. The number of officers competing for advancement was far greater at that time than any time since then. He had to prove himself to be a greater asset than a thousand other peer officers that he was competing with. This he did in spectacular fashion. Among most of his fellow officers, he was believed to be on track for the position of Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force. His career came to an end with his death during the Third World War.

Walter Gruenberg and his father, Henry Gruenberg, began and advanced their Aerospace Force careers in the century after the Third World War. During this time, the service was minuscule by comparison to its prewar dimension. Admission into the Aerospace Force was nearly a given for the sons and daughters of aerospace servicemen. Nepotism was in widespread use in the post Third World War. Castes that were defined by profession developed in this new reality. This was especially true in the military, law enforcement, medical, political and legal professions. Walter Gruenberg was a beneficiary of this occurrence. His position in the Aerospace Force was facilitated by his familiarity with many people in the institution. His extreme proficiency as an officer made it easy for him to move up in rank within the slowly crumbling Alberta Alliance Aerospace Force.

For the whole of Walter Gruenberg’s adult life, until recently, the task of the Alberta Alliance Aerospace Force was to maintain what few air and space crafts they still had in service and to patrol the airspace above their territory. Anything beyond this was impractical for an industrially crippled, massively overpopulated and impoverished state. In the past, Gruenberg had no expectation of ever commanding a robust Aerospace Force. This outlook changed nearly a year earlier, the day that Eckhart called on him to manage a massive Aerospace Force buildup. Gruenberg leaped into the task with enthusiasm.

During the previous two decades, before this Aerospace Force buildup, Gruenberg had been bored with his life. His career as an Aerospace Force Officer was little more than a job. He tended to the business of managing the institution that employed him and remained thankful for the work. It was the order to train and assemble a fully functional aerospace force that brought excitement into his life. Not since his first few years as an aerospace force officer had Gruenberg been so eager to be about the business he was trained for. He gave no thought to the possibility that he might be called on to command its deployment. He was fully aware of the intended target of his growing Aerospace Force and he had no reluctance about using it to that end.

Gruenberg had no hatred towards the Spacers. He had no opinion about them one way or the other. The argument between the Earth States and the starcorps meant nothing to him. He had no wounds or emotional scars to brood over. In his mind, the state of the world was an after effect of the war and he saw no one to blame for this. He perceived the conflict between the Earth States and the starcorps as a political issue. As an Alberta Alliance Aerospace Force Officer, he thought it out of place for him to be assessing the merits of his political leaders' dispute with the starcorps. He was prepared to carry out the orders of his superiors and he was looking forward to the opportunity of participating in a military conflict.

"General, have a seat," Eckhart instructed with a nod towards the empty seat to his right.  
Gruenberg walked over to the chair and sat in it with exaggerated decorum.

"Gentlemen and ladies, this is General Walter Gruenberg, Commander of the Alberta Alliance Aerospace Force and, as of today, the Supreme Commander of the United Front Expeditionary Space Force." 

The last half of Eckhart's introduction took nearly all by surprise. A hush suddenly filled the room. The term United Front Expeditionary Force had not been used before. The leaders of the other states were hearing this for the first time. They were not making plans to take part in a unified space force. Up until this moment, most believed the goal was to intimidate the starcorps. None of them anticipated that the starcorps would attempt to oppose them militarily. And all of them expected the Alberta Alliance to be the sole aggressor if any act of force were to take place.

“This is madness, Eckhart,” Chrisfield spoke up with an inflection of incredulity. “We cannot go to war with the starcorps. We need them. The Earth needs the starcorps intact.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” General Gruenberg spoke up without hesitation. “The starcorps will surrender before any real fighting happens.”

“And you know this how?” Chrisfield questioned back.

"They have no choice. The starcorps do not have the numbers to oppose an armada on the scale that our combined states can assemble. Even if they could build a comparable fighter force, they don't have the personnel to man a space fleet one-twentieth of our size."

"And what about that starship with the heavy weapons that they are building out there?" The Prime Minister of Kanto; Moto Sadao, called out from the fifth row.

"That is their biggest mistake,” Gruenberg lectured cavalierly. “A warship as large as a starship is going to be vulnerable to a fighter attack. A spaceship of that size is going to need a large fighter screen. But the fact remains, they don't have the numbers to repel an attack from our combined forces. If anything, a warship works to our advantage."

"And how did you come to that conclusion?" Shin Lin questioned.

"They've given us a military target,” Gruenberg responded casually. “The starships, the star-factories, these are valuable assets crammed with civilian personnel. Damaging or destroying these spaceships I suppose would be out of the question. But military spaceships are fair game. They've given us a way of demonstrating our power without damaging the property that we’re trying to acquire."

The room full of government leaders took in this information and considered it in silence for several seconds. At the end of this time, Chrisfield posed a question with no strength of conviction behind it.

"What about the upgrades that are being done to the civilian starships?"

General Gruenberg had no studied opinion on this and he betrayed that with a hesitation to speak. Defense Minister Wilkinson, however, did not have this problem. He began his reply almost immediately.

"We don't believe this work has anything to do with a weapon system. The technology behind the new thrusters they are installing in all their spaceships is common knowledge. We have incorporated this new design in our own space planes. There is nothing in the other upgrades that looks like a component for a weapon system. It would be almost impossible to conceal those types of upgrades to a civilian ship."

"If they're not militarizing the starships, then what are they doing?" Shin Lin questioned with insistence.

"The engineers think that the structural modifications that they are doing are because of the new engines and zero gravity generators,” Wilkinson reported with a shrug. “They believe that they’re just trying to make their starships faster."

"How does that factor into your plan to destroy this starcorp warship, General Gruenberg?" Shin Lin asked out of curiosity.

"I’m intrigued, but I’m not worried,” Gruenberg returned with a hint of arrogance. “Their civilian starships are irrelevant. As for this warship that they are building, they will need a great deal of speed to survive an engagement with the combined forces of the United Front Pact. But not even that would give them the advantage they will need to prevail in a fight."

“So why build it? Why are they going to all of the trouble of constructing a warship?” Chrisfield challenged to no one in particular.

“I suspect they believe we lack the resolve for a space battle,” Gruenberg returned in a calm voice. “And they could be right.”  
Gruenberg paused for a moment to give weight to his last remark. At the end of this time, he continued with his supposition.

“The starcorps have no way of knowing how many aerospace fighters we have. My guess is that they’re not counting on Earth to project a strong military presence in space, at least not in the foreseeable future.”

Except for Eckhart, everyone within the room went quiet so that they could consider this last point.

“If we do not fully commit to the use of force, then the starcorps will win,” Eckhart roared into silence after a moment of hesitation. “The famine crisis will grow. Hunger riots will become more frequent. We will be forced to give in to their terms. This is what they want.”

"And what do you want, Eckhart?" Chrisfield questioned with an inflection of suspicion.

Eckhart took a second to study Chrisfield before verbalizing his answer in straightforward speech.

"I want a public pledge from each of you to support, with men and machines, any military campaign, sanctioned by the United Front Pact members, against the starcorps."

"And how do we go about sanctioning a military campaign?" Shin Lin asked with a soft voice.

"That will be decided by a majority vote," Eckhart assured without hesitation.

Most of the heads of states in the room let out silent exhales of relief after hearing this. Nearly all were not prepared to leave that decision to Eckhart. Six of them decided at that moment to never vote for military action against the starcorps. Most of the others thought it unlikely that they ever would vote to go to war with the starcorps. It seemed like an unnecessary adventure for all that were not militantly hostile towards the starcorps.

"And why are we doing this?" Chrisfield questioned after a moment of pondering.

Getting the disjointed forces of the United Front Pact aligned behind a single command structure was what Eckhart wanted most from this meeting. He knew that all but one or two of the heads of state in the auditorium would refuse to be a part of an expeditionary force that was solely under his authority to deploy. This was his only reason for putting the majority vote in play from the start. He was desperate for a commanding role, but he could see no way to avoid a majority rule configuration. He had made the decision to agree to this position a week earlier and he was happy to see that it was having the effect that he wanted. All of the faces before him looked to be agreeable with this arrangement.

"The starcorps need to see us as a unified force,” Eckhart responded. “They need to know that we're serious."

The heads of state in the auditorium could not find a flaw in this thinking, and they felt obliged to sign on because of this. None of them wanted to go back to their constituents and try to explain why they did not pledge the state's forces to this effort. At this time in Earth’s history, it was politically unhealthy not to be visibly hostile towards the starcorps. After a moment of pondering the heads of state began agreeing to Eckhart’s proposal, one by one, without a single dissent.


	24. Go, No Go

Four months had passed since the United Front Pact Members pledged to support each other in any military conflict with the starcorps. Since that time all attempts by BX01 Starcorp League to negotiate a deal with the United Front Pact States that they could live with were rejected. This the UFP states did with next to no thought given to their offers. If they gave any response it would always be a reiteration of their initial demand, without variation. The growing impression within the general populace of both sides was that an agreement between them was impossible.

Eric Gourmand had been the Chairperson of the BX01 Starcorp League for seven years, by this date. During the twelve years before this, he sat on the Starcorp League Defense Committee. His total tenure as a Representative to the Starcorp League was twenty-three years. For the whole of his time the dominant concern of the league was the threat from Earth. The distressed planet was essentially a petri dish for the cultivation of hostility towards the starcorps. The Defense Committee was put in place seventy-two years earlier to maintain an up to date threat assessment of the planet. There was a tiny minority of people that could claim to be as knowledgeable as Gourmand on the social and political dynamics of Earth, and its industrial and military disposition. There were none that could claim to be more so informed.

Gourmand knew that there were Earth leaders that would jump at a chance to do harm to the starcorps, but he was anticipating that these inclinations would amount to nothing in the short term. He had no doubt that the growing splinter groups of rogue militant Earthers would become increasingly involved in acts of sabotage, terrorism, and piracy. He forecasted that these acts would become a growing problem for the starcorps even if a concerted military action from Earth never came.

Regardless of this thinking, Gourmand knew that a full-scale military action from Earth was possible. He was only too aware that Earth had the potential to assert itself with overwhelming military might. This belief notwithstanding, in the past he calculated that the leaders of Earth would not seriously entertain this thinking for another ten years at the earliest. Over the past several months, this belief eroded away. As of this day, he was all but convinced that the United Front Pact members were well past thinking of armed conflict with them.

The league had been accumulating reports from dozens of sources about a military buildup on Earth. Their concerns about what the United Front Pact States were doing had grown ever since they surrendered management of Earth Space to them. This was aggravated by the restrictions that the United Front Pact States put on their presence in Earth Space. Starcorp spaceships and spaceplanes were seldom allowed any closer to Earth than the orbit of the Moon. The handoffs of goods were conducted in space whenever possible. The United Front Pact States had effectively turned all of Earth Space into a no-fly zone. The position of the BX01 Starcorp near the outer boundary of medium Earth orbit was tolerated with tight restrictions.

The growing presence of Earth patrol crafts did much to incite the suspicions of the Starcorp League. This protective barrier screamed of secrecy, and there was only one thing they could think of to warrant this kind of territoriality, a military buildup. Over the past four months, the starcorps’ monitoring of electronic transmissions and communications emanating from Earth grew tenfold. What few starcorp representatives that were allowed down to the planet were encouraged to note any unusual news and gossip about industry, trade, armed forces and politics. Collectively this study produced a picture of a planet on a mission to reinvigorate its military in the short term.

The league chose not to react to their growing suspicion of Earth’s military buildup while they thought it safe to do so. This belief in their safety was engendered by the fact that there was no evidence of an inordinately large increase in Earth Orbit traffic. The League Representatives were advised by their military thinkers that Earth could not hide a functioning Space Force. They were told that training flights and joint maneuvers involving multiples of dozens of crafts would have to be conducted to produce an effective fighting force. It was explained to them that this training would have to be performed in space and that this could not be concealed from them. Up until two days earlier this event had not been seen by them from their high orbit locations. Since that time, a continuous parade of spaceplanes in large formations were being observed above the planet’s atmosphere and moving about in medium Earth orbit. This set off an alarm within the league. In response to this alert, Gourmand called into session an emergency assembly of the BX01 Starcorp League.

"This assembly is in order," Gourmand declared after rapping his gavel onto the sound block.

The BX01 Starcorp League held its assemblies within the Large Hall of the Legislative Tower inside the Starship Berenberg. The hall supported seating for five-hundred people. It was, essentially, a large auditorium. Small desks, with chairs behind them, filled the hall in a U-shaped formation. The desks were situated in a checkerboard pattern and divided into six sections by five aisles. All the chairs faced inward towards a large semicircle dais that protruded out from the wall. The dais had three levels. The chairperson sat behind a desk on the top level. Secretaries and clerks filled the bottom two layers. The wall behind the dais was one large monitor that was connected to the auditorium computer. As Gourmand spoke a large webcam transmission of him doing so displayed at the center of the monitor. Also, speakers about the room amplified his voice. The auditorium computer was programmed to do this for which ever person that initiated their personal webcam and microphone and was recognized by the chairperson.

"We will dispense with the roll call and the reading of minutes for this session if there are no objections.”

Gourmand paused to give time for someone to obtain the first position with the auditorium computer. After two seconds of waiting for a Representatives name to appear on his display, Gourmand concluded that there were no objections and moved on to the reason for this unscheduled meeting.

“It is the suggestion of the League Defense Committee that we do a go-no-go vote on Operation Exodus. Is there any discussion?”

Gourmand expected all present to have read the League Defense Committee report. That report was flagged Security Level One and electronically mailed to all them. It was for this reason that he did not think it necessary to read it. Time was at a premium and possibly running out. It took less than a second for half a dozen representatives to trigger their webcams in response to his query. Their webcam transmissions appeared, side by side, across the top of the wall monitor, from left to right. Each video was one-fourth the size of Gourmand's. They appeared in the order that they arrived in the system. The white indicator lights that bordered their desks lit up as well. Their names appeared on Gourmand’s personal monitor. They were situated in the same order as they were on the wall. The queue went from the top down. Gourmand activated the first Representative with a touch of his hand to the name on his personal monitor. An instant later that Representative’s webcam transmission replaced Gourmand at the center of the monitor. Gourmand's webcam transmission moved to the bottom right of the monitor and shrunk to one-fourth its original size. All the other webcam transmissions disappeared from the monitor.

“The Chair recognizes the Representative from F-J-0-1,” Gourmand stated an instant later.

The Representative from FJ01 called for a debate on the question on an Operation Exodus go/no go vote. His motion was quick to be seconded, and most the other Representatives supported this request.

“The yeas have it,” Gourmand acknowledged. “The chair will entertain up to two minutes of speeches on this subject.”

The webcam transmission of the Representative for GH01 suddenly popped up on the wall monitor. The white-display-lights that bordered his desk lit up to mark his location in the room. They also served as visual proof that the system was working correctly.

“The Chair recognizes the Representative from G-H-0-1,” Gourmand announced.

“Mr. Chairman,” Representative GH01 called out. “There is no going back from this action once we start it. If we are wrong about the threat level, then we will be venturing out into the void without cause. This is not something that should be done based on speculation. Mr. Chairman, I advise that we wait until we are sure that Operation Exodus is the last option open to us."

After GH01 had deactivated his microphone, the illumination about his desk went out. The video of him slid to the lower left and shortened to one-quarter of the size that it was when he was speaking. It lingered there for ten seconds. As this was happening the jeers from half a dozen other Representatives in the auditorium could be faintly heard, and three more Representatives popped up onto the wall monitor. Gourmand unblocked the Representative at the front of the queue.

“The Chair recognizes the Representative from L-L-A-0-1,” Gourmand announced to the floor.

“Mr. Chairman,” the Representative from LLA01, spoke out from behind his desk. “This report by the League Defense Committee provides no definitive proof that the United Pact States are planning to do us harm. The bulk of their intelligence before this suggested that the Earth was decades away from mounting any kind of military action. I don’t think this report disqualifies those earlier studies of Earth. I believe that another four weeks of study is appropriate ahead of bringing this to a vote.”

As soon as LLA01 deactivated his microphone the video of him slid to the lower left and shortened to one-quarter of the size as well. It lingered there for ten seconds and then faded out. Jeers of a small number of Representatives made a weak attempt to fill the auditorium. While this was happening the videos of four Representatives appeared in the top-left-corner of the wall monitor. Gourmand gave recognition to the Representative at the top of the queue and unblocked his webcam in the same moment.

“Mr. Chairman,” the Representative from RSE01 began. “I submit that this build up is just a lot of saber rattling. It is my belief that the United Front Pact States are putting on a show for our benefit. This is all theater. We already know that the Earth is too disorganized to produce a large space force in the short term. This fact has already been established. Mr. Chairman, we’re being intimidate. They want us to accept their terms. What we should do here is ignore this.”

The jeers were much louder when RSE01 deactivated his microphone. As his video slid away to the bottom left corner of the wall monitor, the webcam transmissions of twenty-four Representatives appeared on the top of it, in rapid succession. Once again Gourmand recognized the Representative at the top of the queue and unblocked his webcam. A second later an enraged Representative from DKL01 began to reverberate the auditorium with his oratory.

"Mr. Chairman, my colleague from R-S-E-0-1 is taking a naïve view of these events. Past reports about Earth’s capacity to develop a space force were based upon analysis done before the United Front Pact came into existence. Earth has clearly demonstrated that it has a growing military presence in space. To what extent is irrelevant. We must act to secure the survival of the starcorps. If we do nothing, we risk becoming subjugated by Earth, either through coercion or force. This is no longer simply a possibility. This outrageous reparation demand is proof of their intentions. It would bankrupt us all. The United Front Pact States would be able to buy all our starcorps for several thousand times less than their true value. We are well past the question of should we leave. Operation Exodus may have been created as a last resort plan, but I submit to you that the time is now. This is not something that we can afford to dither about. We must leave this system. This is now a question of when we should leave and not if we should leave. Mr. Chairman, Operation Exodus must be put into motion as soon as possible. If we wait for proof of Earth’s military intentions, it could cost us everything."

When the Representative from DKL01 deactivated his microphone, a roar of support filled the auditorium. His argument was a foretaste of what was to come. The next six speakers echoed this thinking and were lauded with equal fervor for their thinking. Over the next hour, the opposition to activating Operation Exodus was silent but for one. His argument was taken with the usual disdain. The last four speakers were all for putting the plan in motion. After the last speaker had spoken, there was silence for nearly a minute and then Gourmand began to speak.

“If there are no objections, I move that we put the question to a vote.”

An instant behind this motion the webcam transmission of the XRT01 Representative popped up on the wall monitor and on Gourmand’s personal display. He activated the Representatives microphone with a touch of his hand to the display.

“The Chair recognizes the Representative from X-R-T-0-1,” Gourmand announced.

“Mr. Chairman, I move to suspend the rules and have the vote taken on this main motion by a two-thirds vote.”

An instant behind this the webcam transmissions of a dozen representatives popped up on the wall monitor. Their names appeared on Gourmand’s personal monitor at that same instant. Gourmand saw no need to acknowledge the XRT01 Representatives motion. He knew what was about to happen. To save time he simply activated the microphone of the lead representative on his monitor as he spoke.

“The Chair recognizes the Representative from N-K-0-1.”

“I second the motion,” the NK01 promptly responded.

“It is motioned and seconded to suspend the rules and have the vote taken on this main motion by a two-thirds vote,” Gourmand reported to the hall. “All those in favor so indicate now.

The webcam transmissions of thirty-six Representatives suddenly appeared on the wall monitor in response to Gourmand’s request. The white-display-lights on the desks of these representatives lit up as well. Five seconds later their numbers were tallied on the monitor under the heading “In Favor.” In that same instant, the webcam transmissions of the representatives and their display lights winked out. Gourmand remained as the only webcam transmission on display by the monitor.

“Those opposed so indicate now,” Gourmand called out.

The webcam transmissions of the remaining twenty-eight Representatives suddenly appeared on the wall monitor. The white-display-lights on their desks lit up as well. Five seconds later their numbers were tallied on the monitor under the heading Opposed. A second behind this Gourmand declared the result.

“The affirmative has it and the vote to activate Operation Exodus will require a two-thirds majority vote.”

Gourmand paused to give weight to his last remark before speaking again.

“Those in favor of activating Operation Exodus vote yes. Those that are not favor of activating Operation Exodus vote no."

A second behind this statement the desks that the Representatives were sitting behind were lit up with green or red lights. The desks of those that were in favor lit up with green lights. The desks of those that were opposed lit up with red lights. The auditorium computer quickly tallied the votes and displayed it on the wall monitor and on Gourmand’s personal display. The Chairman noted this and announced the result to the all.

“The affirmatives have it, Operation Exodus is a go.”


	25. Weekend Warriors

The last time Eric Pettorino was summoned by Joshua it was to inform him, and the other Division Heads, of a drastic change in the political complexion of Earth. When Eric received this new summons, his first thought was that there was a new development. Shortly, he dismissed this thinking when he discovered that the other Division Heads were not called to this meeting. This information told him that the subject of the meeting concerned him and only him. It also made him aware that he had no idea why he was being summoned to Joshua’s office.

Eric had become accustomed to Joshua’s frequent unannounced visits to his work sites and his daily electronic communications. For all general updates and directives, the one-hour weekly meetings of the Division Heads seemed to be working well enough for this. It was for these reasons that Eric could not imagine what Joshua had to say or show him that warranted a face to face meet. Anything that he could say to him in person could just as easily be communicated electronically. And the only work that Joshua wanted to scrutinize with him present was the work going on in his labs. The more Eric thought about it, the more it seemed to him that this trip was a waste of his time.

The trip was especially annoying to Eric because of the distance. Joshua's office was aboard the Starship Dominion. All the executive, administrative and political offices were gathered there. Eric’s work site was located aboard the Greyson Star-Factory. A sector of this ship was allocated for his office, manufacturing plant, laboratories, and engineering workrooms. Traveling to Joshua's office involved nearly an hour of space flight from the Greyson to the Dominion. In Eric’s mind, the group meetings aboard the Dominion were already a waste of his time. This one-on-one meet seemed even more extravagant when compared to that.

It was the start of the first shift of the day. All Division Heads were expected to be at work from the start to the end of the first shift. This simplified the scheduling of meetings, events, and communications. When it was convenient, these things were transacted within the work periods of the individuals they involved. Each day was divided into three eight-hour shifts. A project clock was used to synchronize work schedules, shipments, deliveries, and maintenance to a twenty-four-hour work day. Despite this scheduling, Eric had been awake at his job for the past eighteen hours when this summons arrived. This was not an unusual practice for him or any of the Division Heads. The Titan Project was in high gear and time was at a premium.

Eric arrived outside of Joshua Sloan’s office looking and feeling more than a little sleepy. Normally he would have been napping in his office at this time. He had taken to spending several days in a row at work. The pace of innovations and alterations within other divisions of the project had him and his team forever adapting to new power levels and capabilities. The work that this was creating was only a portion of the motivation that was driving him. Each new challenge that the project presented enhanced his zeal for the task that was handed to him.

“You’re expected, Director. Go right on in.”

Eric acknowledged the instruction from the secretary with a nod and then made his way through the doorway to Joshua’s office.

Joshua's office was unfamiliar to Eric. He knew where it was, but he never had an occasion to go inside it before. All his past meetings with him were either in his own office, a conference room or in a large workspace. His initial inclination when he entered the room was to inspect it. He was surprised to see that it was scarcely furnished. A desk with three chairs around it was situated in front of the wall opposite the doorway that he came through. A computer was integrated into the desk. Two large video monitors were built into the wall on either side of the door. The first person he noted was a stranger to him. A tall, well-developed, stern-faced male was seated in one of the chairs in front of the desk. His uniform provided Eric with one bit of information about him, he was a high-ranking officer within the newly formed RG01UTC2182 Space Fighter Force. The second person he noted after the entering the office was Joshua. He was seated behind the desk.

“Have a seat, Eric,” Joshua beckoned with a gesture towards the last remaining empty chair.

Eric responded to this by moving towards the seat next to the stranger.

“Eric Pettorino, this is Commander Ronald Noonan,” Joshua announced with a point towards the stranger.

Eric and Ronald acknowledged each other with hellos and a brief handshake. Joshua waited for a second after this was completed before continuing to speak.

“Commander Noonan is in charge of the Space Fighter program.”

Eric was more than a little confused by this introduction. He had heard the name Ronald Noonan and the news of his posting as the commanding officer of the Space Fighter Force. New developments in the Titan Project was common talk among high-ranking RG01 officials. What made this meeting confusing for him was the fact that it was happening. He could not imagine what he and Ronald had to say to each other.

“I brought the both of you here to discuss a situation with our fighter pilot training program,” Joshua added after a pause.

This declaration was a surprise to both Eric and Ronald. The expressions on their faces intimated this. They had no idea that there was a situation that needed to be addressed.

“I don’t see how that concerns me,” Eric spoke up with a shrug. “I have nothing to do with pilot training.”

“And I’m not aware of any problem with our training program,” Ronald articulated an instant behind. “We have four times as many volunteers as we have fighters to put them in. The simulators are working out great and training is ahead of schedule.”

“The schedule is moved up,” Joshua countered flatly.

This report took Ronald by surprise. He had heard nothing about a new timetable for the development of his forces. He hesitated for a second to cycle through this thought and then he asked the question his thinking produced.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“We’ve been activated,” Joshua explained without embellishment. “I have orders to bring the Space Force to Mars, ASAP.”

Hearing this was alarming to Eric. Up until this moment, the RG01 Space Force was just an exciting project. The idea of it being deployed for battle was, until this moment, a far-off possibility in the back of his mind. His head began to fill up with thoughts of him in the middle of a war in space. He had a sudden need for verification that this event was about to happen. He reacted to this need by asking a question.

“Has there been an attack?”

“The League believes that United Front Pact is amassing a large force of space fighters,” Joshua answered after turning his attention to Eric. “They want us in position to engage it if they do attack.”

“Why Mars?”

This question was almost a reflex action for Ronald. Instinct told him that high Earth orbit was a better place to lay in wait for an armada of military spacecraft leaving the planet. Going to Earth would give them the ability to engage a space force before it could scatter. Mars was just one possible target. There were dozens of starcorps positioned inside the perimeter of the asteroid belt. In his mind, it seemed impossible to protect them all while all their forces were congregated around Mars.

“The League is rallying all starcorps to Mars. That includes RG01.”

Joshua knew that this answer explained why they were being positioned around Mars. He also knew that it invited another question that he could not answer. The star drive that the league was installing in all starcorp starships and spaceships was a top-secret program. He was under orders not to reveal this to anyone. For anyone not in possession of this knowledge it made no sense for all the starcorps to congregate in one place. Doing this had two obvious negatives. First, it brought to a halt all starcorp enterprises. And secondly, it created one target for the Earth forces to engage. However, it was the creation of this one target that the league wanted.

Time was needed to ready the starcorp spaceships for interstellar travel. The mounting evidence that Earth was producing a space force gave the league reason to consider the possibility that time was running out. It was thought that a piecemeal exodus would provoke Earth into an immediate response. To prevent this, a single launch date from a single location was decided upon. Joshua and his RG01 Space Force was being called in to shield Mars space while final preparations for this launch was underway.

“Why move—everything—to Mars?” Ronald questioned with a perplexed expression.

“They have their reasons,” Joshua answered with a blank face.

Ronald took away more from Joshua’s poker face than he did from his reply. He knew that something was triggering this action and that Joshua was not about to tell him what.

“I can’t imagine what that might be,” Ronald retorted with a soft shake of his head. “But it doesn’t matter. I have more than enough pilots trained and ready right now.”

“No, you don’t,” Joshua countered with an emphatic inflection.

Ronald was surprised anew by this repudiation. He shortly cycled through this feeling and moved on to defensive.

“I have more than two-hundred volunteers trained and ready to operate two hundred and eighty-four Mows,” Ronald insisted. “Another one-hundred will have completed their training before we reach Mars. I don’t see the problem.”

Joshua gave no thought to responding to this verbally. With one hand, he manipulated the computer console that was built into his desktop. The two large wall monitors switched on a second behind this. A read out of names with an average simulation score attached to each one, began to scroll up the screens. With a gesture of his hand, Joshua directed the attentions of Eric and Ronald to it as he spoke.

“There’s the problem.”

Ronald and Eric noted the display with looks of confusion. They had little interest in the names. It was the numerical data that puzzled them. The significance of this information was not understood by either of them. Impatience got the better of Ronald fifteen seconds into his study.

“What are we looking at?”

“Monitor one is displaying the average simulation scores of your space force volunteer pilots,” Joshua explained in a calm voice. “Monitor two is displaying the average simulation scores of Eric’s test pilots.”

Both of Joshua’s guest took another minute to examine the data scrolling up the screens. Periodically they switched their attentions from one screen to the other. Before they were through assessing this data, Joshua began to speak again.

“As you can see, most of your volunteers are not half as good as Eric’s test pilots, and the rest are barely at that.”

“Joshua, my test pilots, have been doing this for more than two years,” Eric offered in defense of the trainees. “These volunteers started their training less than six months-ago.”

“They just need some more time,” Ronald added in with a defensive inflection. “They’ll get there.”

“We’re out of time,” Joshua retorted.

Ronald became suspicious of this statement from the instant he heard it. The suggestion that there was some urgency to this seemed to be a poor fit with his understanding of the situation on Earth. He was not ignorant of the United Front Pact member’s disposition. He had been following the news on the changes that were occurring there. It was his guess that the Earth’s space force was still in the early stages of its development and not likely to attempt to assert itself militarily over the next twelve months, at a minimum.

“Why the hurry?” Ronald challenged. “Is there something you’re not telling us?”

Joshua took a moment to consider the question before answering with the only reply he considered safe to give.

“The possibility of armed conflict at some time in the near future is real. That’s all you need to know for now.”

Eric was still mystified by his presence in this meeting. He had nothing to do with the pilots and he certainly was not about to participate in the fighting. The talk of armed conflict and time running out had finally pushed him to the end of his patience.

“I’m not understanding this,” Eric spoke up with a confused shake of his head. “I have nothing to do with pilot training. Why am I here?”

“We’re going to replace the space force volunteers with your test pilots,” Joshua answered in an impassive voice.

The definitive tone of Joshua’s speech did not go unnoticed. Eric was shocked into silence by it. Ronald was shocked into a blurted response.

“You can’t be serious.”

Joshua was not offended by Ronald’s dissension. He understood the magnitude of what he was suggesting. Replacing trained security personnel with civilians on the eve of a war was not his original plan.

“Are we talking about conscription,” Eric questioned with a look of concern. “Because my test pilots are not soldiers.”

“No,” Joshua corrected. “We’ll offer them the same contract that we gave the security force volunteers.”

Eric was not convinced that his test pilots would accept this offer. He was not intricately familiar with their lives and characters, but he did believe them to be more passive than aggressive.

“And what if they don’t sign on?” Eric queried with a semblance of puzzlement.

Joshua had no ready answer to this question. This was true even though he had been considering that possibility for the past two hours. After a moment of thought, he gave the only answer that was a fit into his plans.

“They will.”

"No, they won’t,” Ronald disputed. “Our security force volunteers are career officers. Putting their lives on the line and combatting hostile adversaries is what they do for a living. These test pilots are just a bunch of cyber geeks and weekend warriors. They’re not equipped with the mettle necessary for a war.”

“Weekend warriors or not,” Joshua argued back, “We need them. Their skill level is twice that of your security force officers. I need people with the skill to win more than I need people with the mettle to lose bravely.”

Ronald was astonished by this opposition to his thinking on the subject. The fact that these test pilots had no combat training seemed to be a major failing to him. He took a moment to digest this bewildering counterargument from Joshua and then he asked the question that this action produced.

“You can’t believe that this is going to work?” Ronald questioned with a look of incredulity.

“It has to work,” Joshua insisted flatly.

Joshua paused to give weight to this declaration. He looked from Ronald to Eric and back again with an expression of determination. At the end of his pause, he spoke again with greater intensity.

“We have to make it work.”

The intransigence in Joshua’s speech was clearly noted by Eric and Ronald. After a moment of thought, they both accepted his decision with looks of resignation and dismay. Shortly after noting this acquiescence Joshua delivered is final directive.

“We’re going to have this in place by the time we get to Mars. Is that understood?”

After a moment of thought, Eric and Ron acknowledged their understanding with grudging nods of their heads.


	26. Destination Mars

The arrival to Perth, Western Australia, by the Heads of State of the United Front Pact members was a huge media event. News crews and spectators by the thousands were staked out at the Perth Aerospace Port, the five-star hotels and the Perth Convention and Exhibition Center. They waited at these locations in the hope of catching a glimpse of these leaders as they moved from one location to the other. The eyes of the world had been trained on the city ever since the summit was announced sixteen hours earlier. Eckhart’s arrival in Perth was the single largest news event occurring on the planet at that time.

Eckhart called for this gathering in a fiery speech that was broadcast live around the world the day before. The reason for the summit was the departure of BX01 two days earlier. Nearly all the peoples of Earth were engaging in speculative talk about this and the silence coming from space. Over this time, hundreds of sources began confirming each other’s suspicions that the Starcorps were cutting all ties with Earth. Reports of a sudden exodus of all starcorp intermediaries on the planet, three days earlier, began to trickle out through low-level government officials. By the time Eckhart started his speech, the world knew that something big was afoot. When he was done, everyone knew that the Starcorps were mobilizing around Mars.

The governments of the world and more importantly the United Front Pact members had been trying to track the movement of several starcorps over the past week, with little success. At the start of this time, it was their guess that some portion of the starcorps, situated outside of Earth space, had been on the move for past three weeks. The projected destination for this migration was confirmed when BX01 launched itself towards Mars. Their trajectory made sense of the sparse amount of data that suggested a movement of starships in that general direction.

The sudden departure of BX01 set off more alarms than all the speculative chatter about missing starships done. The speculative chatter was due to the limitations in tracking starships outside of Earth Space. Visual confirmations were difficult at best. To do this, the starships had to be spied on with powerful space telescopes, at regular intervals. The United Front Pact States had neither the telescopes nor the interest in maintaining a visual on the starcorps. It was far easier to just monitor the transmissions between BX01 and the outlying starcorps. This was something that the United Front Pact members had been doing as a matter practice. These transmissions provided them with continuous evidence of the starcorps' general locations. What the United Front Pact members did not know was that the starcorps were launching, in silence, behind a veil of transmissions from decoy spaceships. Each starcorp left a single spaceship behind to produce these bogus transmissions. This was done to conceal the movements of the starships, but this deception was only partially successful.

Over time, an ever-increasing number of images from land-based telescopes were giving rise to suspicions that a portion of the starcorps were on the move. How big this portion was and the number of starships involved in the movement was unknown to them. Two weeks into this mystery they began an active search to verify the exact location of all starships in Sol Space. They were still working at this when the three starships of BX01 began their launch.

The magnitude of what was occurring began to register in the thinking of the United Front Pact leaders when all lines of communication between them and the starcorps went down. This happened a few minutes before the BX01 starships started to push away from Earth space. The telemetry that preceded all shipments to and from the starcorps came to a stop. The clerical communication lines that tethered the Earth and the starcorps together were silent. A flood of inquiries between low-level bureaucrats erupted immediately after this. They all wanted to know the meaning of this sudden silence. An hour later mid-level bureaucrats were collecting reports from their underlings, assembling them into a single report and passing it up to their superiors. Another hour into this quiet a report came in that all Earth ambassadors, emissaries, intermediaries and visitors aboard the BX01 starships had been evicted and were in flight back to the planet. Within seconds of hearing this, Prime Minister Eckhart issued a directive for all available space systems to track BX01 as it fell away from Earth space. It was right about this time that the transmissions from the decoy spaceships went silent as well.

Eckhart summoned for all his available ministers and his top military minds within minutes of learning that all starcorp transmissions had stopped. General Walter Gruenberg topped this list that included three other Generals. Among the ministers present for this meeting was George Wilkinson; Minister of Defense, Peter Carr; the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ronald Kaplan; Minister of Public Works. The question that Eckhart wanted them to answer was this, what are the starcorps doing? To his frustration, they had no definitive answer. The nearest that General Gruenberg came to a credible explanation was that the starcorps were preparing for war and Mars space was their chosen battlefield. No sooner had he said this did he begin to tear down this thinking.

There was no imminent threat to the starcorps to warrant this reaction.

Given that they had the whole solar system to work with, it made no sense for the starcorps to position itself in a relatively convenient location for the spacefighters of Earth.

Mars was of no great value to the starcorps. Why would they fight to defend it?

If the starcorps were planning for a war, then it made no sense for them to take a defensive posture. Their only chance at winning it was by way of a surprise attack.

It was not until it was suggested that the starcorps could not win a war with the United Front Pact States that the group began to entertain the idea that the starcorps had a secret weapon. This thinking brought them to the question of the modifications that the starcorps had been making to their starships. This, in turn, brought them to Wilkinson’s update on that subject.

“Our engineers still don’t believe that these modifications have any offensive applications. They say that the most likely purpose behind them is to enable their starships to accelerate faster.”

“If they don’t have a military purpose then why are they spending so much time and money on these modifications?” Eckhart challenged with a flair of anger. “Since my Minister of Defense seems to be useless on this subject, does anyone else have any ideas about this?”

Wilkinson was more than a little offended by this rebuke. With a huff of breath, he slouched back in his chair, crossed his arms and sulked. He took some solace from the fact that the other members of the group appeared to be equally perplexed by the question. For a long pause, they said nothing while Eckhart scowled at each of them, one after the other. At the end of this time, Ronald Kaplan mumbled out an unfinished thought.

“They could be filling their stores with foodstuff from Mars and preparing to leave the star system altogether.”

Wilkinson was quick to scoff at that suggestion and pointed out the fallacy in it a second later.

“It would take them near to a century to reach the nearest neighboring star even with these improved engines,” Wilkinson reported in a surly tone. “The engineers tell me this would only make sense if they had a star drive.”

“Maybe that’s what they have,” Kaplan suggested without the timbre of conviction. 

Kaplan was still developing this thought as he was speaking it. He understood that the mechanics of this idea was beyond the known capabilities of the starcorps. Despite this, he could not dismiss the thinking that these recent events fit within the logistics of such a plan.

Eckhart was confused by this thought. An instant behind hearing it he snapped out a question to anyone that could provide an answer.

“Is a star-drive possible?”

“The scientists say no, or at least not at the present,” Wilkinson reported with a look of tedium. “There’s only speculation about it, something about time being pliable outside of the space/time continuum. But there’s no theory on how to do this.”

“What you’re saying is that your scientist doesn't have a theory,” Carr challenged.

Eckhart was quick to note Carr’s suggestion and turned his attention toward Kaplan a second later.

“What makes you think that the starcorps could have a star-drive?”

“I don’t know that they do,” Kaplan returned with a shrug.

This answer confused Eckhart even more. He gave Kaplan and then the room a look that said he did not know why this was being discussed. Two seconds later he got an answer to this question.

“The starcorps have some kind of X Prize,” Carr reported while searching through his memory. “I don’t recall the name they gave it. But it’s more than fifty-years old. The purpose of it was to encourage the development of a star-drive.”

“It’s the Bridge Competition,” Wilkinson educated with a hint of exasperation. “And no one has won it, yet.”

“And you know this how?” Eckhart queried with a puzzled look towards his Minister of Defense.

Eager to reaffirm his status as a valuable member of this group, Wilkinson responded to the inquiry with a hint of superiority.

“All of the Earth State Embassies inside BX01 have been keeping tabs on this competition since its inception. The competition is still running.”

Carr pondered this report for a moment and then presented an argument in opposition to it.

“It could be that’s what they want us to believe.”

Wilkinson took no objection to this challenge. In his mind, it was a second opportunity to demonstrate his expertise on the starcorps. He responded to Carr’s conjecture with a hint of an amused expression.

“The scientists and engineers that examine all of the intelligence we gather on these starship modifications say that none of it can be construed as a star-drive or a component for a star-drive. There’s no star-drive.”

The silence that followed this statement had Wilkinson convinced that he had brought all talk of a star-drive to an end. This perception lasted for only a few seconds. By the end of this time, Kaplan had pondered out another thought.

“It could be that they haven’t installed them yet?”

Wilkinson came to an immediate understanding why waiting until the last moment might make sense. He hesitated to respond to Kaplan's conjecture so that he could think this idea through.

"If they’re preparing to leave the solar system then unveiling their star-drive is the last thing they would want to do," Carr supported behind a moment of thought.

Wilkinson had considered the idea of the starcorps leaving the solar system and dismissed it a long time ago. All the evidence suggested that they were preparing for war. This was the assumption that all there had been working under from the beginning. After taking a moment to organize his verbiage, Wilkinson countered Carr’s argument by reminding them all of this.

“You forget the warship. They’re not making preparations to run. They’re preparing for war. It doesn’t fit.”

Carr had no response for this, but Gruenberg did.

“Actually, it does fit,” Gruenberg interjected with a contemplative expression. “If they wanted to keep a star-drive a secret then installing them at the last moment in all their starships would be the way to do it. The last modification before launch. This would probably take some time to complete. A large warship might come in handy in a situation like that.”

Gruenberg’s face scrunched into a frown as he paused to give more thought to this thinking. A second into this his expression changed to one of comprehension as he looked to Eckhart then to Carr and back again. At the end of this he delivered his final thought on the matter with an inflection of finality.

“This is not about winning a war. This is about buying time to get away.”

Wilkinson had no retort for this. His mind struggled to find a flaw in the logic but could not. The pieces fit together too well.

An instant after hearing this Carr concluded that this was a perfect read on the situation. He expressed this with a look of astonishment.

Eckhart absorbed this analysis with the look of a man that had just been punched in the stomach by an eight-year-old child. Suddenly it all made sense to him. From that moment on he knew exactly what he had to do. The starcorps had to be stopped, and they had to be stopped now.

Less than three hours later Eckhart was expounding on the starcorp threat to a receptive worldwide audience. He railed on their callous disregard for the suffering of the people of Earth, their greed and disdain for the planet that they come from. He accused the starcorps of having blood on their hands and of trying to lay claim to the entire solar system outside of Earth. He made repeated calls to the people of Earth to rise to the challenge and repeated promises to bring the starcorps to their knees. He spoke of the starcorps’ military buildup and insinuated that they were going to stop the shipments of foodstuff from Mars. He then accused the starcorps of preparing for war in defense of this act. The one thing he did not say anything about was his suspicion that the starcorps were leaving the system. The last thing that Eckhart wanted the people of Earth to believe was that there was a reason for them not to react. In the end, Eckhart reported that he had called the leaders of the United Front Pact States and scheduled a summit for the next day. He disclosed that the purpose of the summit was to establish a consensus on the appropriate response to the starcorp threat.

“This is no insignificant act.”

Eckhart roared out this declaration from his seat at the Perth Summit. Ninety-seven heads of state, each with their complements of aides and associates, along with the invited media and spectators, filled all one-thousand seats in a ninety-five-thousand square foot exhibit hall. The seating was positioned in the formation of a large U. The Chairperson, an ex-mayor of Perth, was situated outside of this formation at the top and center. The meeting had been going on for nearly an hour when Eckhart got his chance to speak. Enraged by Trent Chrisfield’s wait and see proposal Eckhart commenced to berate this thinking with all the intensity he could muster.

“The starcorps have positioned themselves around a food supply that is vital to Earth. They have cut off all contact with us. If they wanted to talk, they would not have severed all lines of communication. We _MUST_ respond quickly and with overwhelming force. If we’re going to talk to them, then let it be from behind the point of a gun. We cannot afford to be slow in our response. The starcorps are, clearly, operating on a timetable that is configured to work against us. The one thing—the first thing that we must do is upset this timetable. If we wait for the starcorps to tell us their plan, then we risk becoming victims of it. The time for debate has passed. Every second that our spacefighters spend on the ground is a second we can never get back!”

With this one vehement barrage, most of the United Pact Leaders were won over to Eckhart’s side. The debate went on for two hours more, but there were few that were willing to dispute Eckhart’s reasoning. Most echoed his call for action. At the end of this time, a vote was taken. A resolution to confront and, if need be, engage the starcorps was passed with only three dissenting votes. Eckhart had his armada. Less than a day later thirty-eight-hundred and seventy-three spacefighters, thirty-two-thousand crewmen, two civilian scientists, three civilian engineers and six politicians, were falling towards Mars. Eckhart, Wilkinson, Carr, and Kaplan were among the six.


	27. Wendy's Wait

It took RG01 70 hours to gather itself together for the trip to Mars. Dozens of projects that were in the works had to be stored away or set adrift in preparation for the launch. At the end of this time five starships, seven factory starships, two agricultural starships, eight spaceships and one basestar began their push out of Saturn space. The first hour of the trip was spent accelerating into the trajectory that would bring them to their destination. Immediately after this, the passengers returned to the habitat rings to wait out the 2600-hour transit to Mars space.

A detailed explanation for this move was not given for the first 2,107 hours of this journey. The general population was simply told that the starcorp was relocating there and that they would be given further details later. This statement did not negate a torrent of speculation about this move. Nearly all of it was motivated by the restrictions on communication that they were traveling under. No transmissions were permitted to leave the confines of the ships. Lasers were used for ship to ship communication. To free up space on these laser links, communications between individuals in two separate ships was limited to text and video messaging. It was clear to everyone that their movement was being kept a secret, but only the people at the top knew from whom. This mystery created some agitation, but this faded out after the first two-hundred hours of their journey.

During the voyage, there was little to do that was constructive for the non-crew members of RG01. There was still some minor work that needed to be completed to the interior of the basestar, but the workforce needed for this was not large. Despite this work, the basestar was operational. It traveled under its own power alongside the other RG01 space-crafts. Aboard the agricultural starship, the care for the crops, the protein cultures and the equipment that nurtured them was an ever-ongoing process, but this too did not require a large workforce. For all other RG01 workers that were not active crew members, the journey across the solar system felt like a cruise ship vacation.

The holiday like atmosphere that RG01 members were experiencing was due to the starships Dominion, Oasis, Cambridge, Sonoma, and Amaterasu. Most long journeys that spacers endured were aboard spaceships. By comparison to a starship these were cramped little vessels. Starships were small cities. They were loaded with amenities that spaceships did not have the room to support. The clear majority of RG01’s inactive workforce spent most of their awake time enjoying the distractions to be found on the promenades of the starships.

For Wendy Beck, this journey back to the inner solar system had no great effect on her day to day existence. She was not a member of the inactive workforce. Her position aboard the Morelli Agricultural Starship made her participation there a daily event, minus days off. This was no inconvenience for her. She enjoyed her work and keeping an eye on her special projects never felt like a chore. This was true to the extent that it was not uncommon for her to look in on her job on her days off. Her attendance on the promenade was severely limited by this work ethic. In this she had no regrets. This was simply the way that it was. Despite this absence of change in her daily routine, there was one aspect of the RG01 downtime that did increase her pleasure. The opportunities it provided for her to be with her family was greatly enjoyed.

Meals in the Beck home became more of an event during this time. On this journey, Daniel had little to do. The work that was being done in the basestar was primarily the construction crew quarters and personnel spaces. His expertise in operating system of the basestar made him overqualified for this work. Still, he rotated in every ten days to supervise the work of others, but he had nothing to do that was hands on. When he was not at work, he made it his job to be present at all meals that Wendy attended.

Sawyer and Adam were less regular in their attendance at meals but were always present for dinners on Wendy’s days off. Sawyer’s spare time was spent with his friends. Between sports and the arcades, he had plenty of activities to keep him occupied. Adam spent the majority of his spare time inside Eric Pettorino’s Computer Science Laboratory. He and a few others were participants in one of Pettorino’s pet projects. Adam’s participation was far more in stressed assistant than worker.

Daphne’s presence at home surpassed her father. This was owed to Benjamin’s absence from the Amaterasu. His fighter pilot training kept him sequestered aboard the basestar and away from her. Between Benjamin’s training and the limitations on communications between spaceships, it was difficult for her to communicate with him. The time she would have set aside for him was available for other uses. Because of this when she was not at school she was at home. This was a choice that was made from sorrow. The amusements of the promenade had no appeal for her during this time.

Contrary to the norm, Wendy was the only member of the family at home when Joshua Sloan chose to break his silence and communicate the reason behind this move to Mars space. In a speech, which was broadcast throughout the convoy, Sloan identified himself as RG01’s overall Project Director and advised all that he answered to the BX01 Starcorp League and none other. He explained that the RG01 Board of Directors managed the civil life of the starcorp and how they had no jurisdiction over him or his project. He advised all that he was to be the Commanding Officer of the RG01 War Machine when it was completed. He explained that RG01 was joining up with the other starcorps to make final preparations for a launch towards the nearest neighboring star. In the first thirty minutes of the telecast, he explained how all of this came about and the new technology that made it feasible. At the end of this time, he told the RG01 members that he was given special powers to complete this task by the BX01 Starcorp League. He explained that they did this with the sanction of their respective Board of Directors. After giving this report, he paused to give weight to these words.

“Per my orders from the Starcorp League,” Sloan commenced again. “RG01 Basestar Orion will be separating from the group in exactly ten hours from now. Our course will be for Earth space. My orders are to entertain any hostile movements from Earth forces for whatever amount of time necessary to secure the Mars launch. The civilian space crafts and personnel in this convoy will continue to Mars. On arrival, anyone that wishes not to be a part of this adventure will have the option of disembarking there. I know that this news is a shock to everyone and probably a big decision to make. Whatever you decide I wish you the best of luck.”

Sloan took a long pause to emphasize that he was moving on to a new subject and then he began to speak again.

“On top of being responsible for the construction of this weapon system, I have been tasked with the job of assembling and training the servicemen to operate it. I was counting on another year to complete both. Recent events on Earth has shortened this timetable.”

Once again Sloan paused, but this time it was to give emphasis to what he was about to say next.

“I need volunteers,” Sloan began in a solemn tone. “I need a minimum of two-hundred additional servicemen with appropriate skill sets to operate this war machine efficiently. To meet this number, offer packages will be sent electronically to all qualified RG01 personnel at the end of this transmission. You will have one hour to submit an application by return E-mail. Seniority will be given precedence. If I fail to get the numbers I need with volunteers, then I will exercise the special powers given to me and activate compulsory enlistment in reverse seniority order.”

Sloan paused here to give weight to what he was about to say.

“Anyone that ignores this call up will be expelled from the BX01 Starcorp Community and left behind on Mars.”

This final declaration produced a moment of astonished silence among all that heard it. It was the belief of the RG01 members that conscription went against the founding principle of the Starcorps. The state was an integral part of the market system. The government was subject to market forces wherever possible. A forced enlistment was the last thing that all had expected to hear. Despite this thinking, all suspected that Sloan could do what he said.

This suspicion was supported by Sloan’s declaration that all the Starcorps were signatories to a statute that gave him this power. The Board of Directors was capable of expelling anyone when given just cause, and just cause was defined by the laws that they made. The populace was dependent upon their influence over the Directors as voters and shareholders to protect them from unpopular laws. No one expected any Starcorp to produce a law that would discourage new members, chase away the ones that they had and downgrade the value of their stock. This action would put that starcorp at a competitive disadvantage with the others. However, if all the starcorps signed on to this statute then there was no disadvantage and Sloan could do as he said.

Wendy’s astonishment exceeded most others that heard Sloan’s speech. For her it was proof that a war was coming, and her family was about to be caught in the middle of it. For several minutes, she panicked over this in silence, and then her thoughts turned to a new possibility. What if Daniel was called up to serve? By comparison to the other members of RG01, he was in the bottom two percent in seniority. His intricate knowledge of the basestar's systems would likely make him an ideal choice. Wendy’s fears doubled with this realization. One minute later she sent off a text to her husband. In it was a request for confirmation that he would not volunteer.

Over the next hour, Wendy’s fears played havoc with her nerves. She knew if Daniel knew he was not going, he would have notified her of this at his earliest convenience. She understood that a return message might take several minutes to arrive because of his location aboard the bases-tar, but one hour was far too excessive. Ship to ship text communication was not that slow.

“Daphne,” Wendy blurted out as her daughter stepped through the front entrance. “You’re home. I suppose you heard like everyone else.”

Wendy began rising off the couch even as she spoke. She noted Daphne’s dazed expression. Her eyes looked to be studying the air around her.

“It’s going to be okay, Honey,” Wendy spoke as she moved towards her daughter. “We’ll be fine.”

"I'm leaving, Mom," Daphne declared with a discernible absence of conviction.

"What do you mean? What does that mean?" Wendy challenged with a perplexed expression.

"Benjamin is going to be on that basestar when it leaves. And I'm going to be on it too."

Daphne's reply added to Wendy's confusion rather than dispel it. She did not think it possible for an offer package to be extended to her nineteen-year-old dependent daughter. This is why she did not entertain it as a thought until this moment.

“Did you get an offer package?” Wendy questioned with a hint of terror in her voice.

“I volunteered,” Daphne returned in a flat voice.

After a moment of silence between them, Daphne turned away and set off for her room. An instant later Wendy followed behind with a shocked expression.

“You can’t volunteer,” Wendy insisted as she followed her daughter into her room. “You’re not even in the workforce. They haven’t sent you an offer package.”

“Yes, I can,” Daphne countered while searching through her closet for clothing she would need to take with her.

“They won’t take you,” Wendy argued. “You’re a dependent.”

“I won’t be after I’m accepted,” Daphne corrected.

Wendy was momentarily confused by this reply. She took a moment to toss off this sensation before speaking again.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I had to agree to drop my dependent status before they would take my application.”

Wendy was stunned into silence by this report. She could do nothing but watch as Daphne continued to sort through her clothing for items she would need.

“I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to do this,” Daphne stopped to explain mournfully. “I’m not a child anymore. I can’t just leave Benjamin. Wherever he is, that’s where I want to be.”

Wendy took a moment to note the sincerity in her daughter’s tone before speaking the thought that was foremost on her mind.

“Are you sure they’re going to accept you? Did they tell you anything?”

“They’re insisting on a minimum number,” Daphne explained with a plaintive stare. “But they will take more if they can get them. I’m going, Mom. I’m just waiting for them to get back to me.” 

Wendy could think of nothing more to say after this. Her daughter was determined to join the RG01 Space Force. She watched in silence for another five minutes as her daughter picked through her belongings. She held on for every second she had to be with her as though it was her last. At the end of this time, Daphne’s com-link bracelet began to chime. Wendy gasped at the sound of it. With her breath held she waited for the news that she expected to come through this communication.

Daphne took a second to look at the Caller ID on her com-link bracelet. The display message indicated that it was a video call. Daphne activated the phone with a voice command. After this, she touched the bracelet to the monitor that was built into the wall. The large rectangular screen flickered on. The visage of a man nearly filled the width of the screen from top to bottom. The name displayed on the bottom right of the screen was Sergeant T.F. Gleeson.

“Ms. Beck, I am calling to notify you that your application has been denied,” Sergeant Gleeson reported with indifference.

Wendy sighed out a breath of relief after hearing this. Daphne went into wide-eyed shock as she shouted out the question that popped into her mind.

“Why?”

Sergeant Gleeson was unfazed by this outburst and responded to her inquiry with continued detachment.

“We can accept only one volunteer from a family group. A member of your family has already signed on to the Space Force.”

At the hearing of this Wendy blurted out her fear an instant before clasping her hands about her mouth.

“Daniel!”  
Daphne took a moment to cogitate Sgt. Gleeson’s report, and her mother’s response, before responding.

“But I dropped my dependent status,” Daphne insisted with a startled expression.

“Your status would have been changed if we had accepted you,” Sgt. Gleeson began to explain with his usual dispassion. “But your application is denied. Your status remains unchanged.”

“So, change it,” Daphne insisted with more than a hint of hysterics. “You have my permission.”

“That’s not my department,” Sgt. Gleeson countered with a soft shake of his head.

“So, I’ll change it,” Daphne argued back. “Just give me a few minutes to make a call.”

“That won’t work,” Sgt. Gleeson advised with his customary neutrality. “Your independent status would have had to have been in effect before the start of this recruitment drive. Your application will not be accepted at this time. Good day.”

Behind that curt response the monitor switched off. Daphne was stunned by the report that her application was denied and that there was nothing that she could do about it. Wendy was stunned about the reason that her application was denied. Mother and daughter used this silence to assimilate what had just transpired. A few seconds later Wendy activated her com-link with the voice command, “wand, call Daniel.” Five seconds later the message “Daniel’s Voicemail Box” appeared on her bracelet.

"Daniel, you can't do this," Wendy pleaded into her com-link. "You hear me? You can't do this."

With her next voice command, Wendy disconnected the call. She then gave her daughter a look and noted that she was dealing with her own distress in silence. Wendy thought to say that she was sorry she could not go. But this was not true, and she could not bring herself to say otherwise. It took her three seconds of thought to come to this conclusion, and then she left for the family room to wait for Daniel’s reply.

Wendy had been sitting on the living-room sofa in silence for nearly thirty minutes. She kept her arms crossed in front of her, and her eyes stared out into the space between her and the far wall. She fidgeted away the time with small movements with her feet and hands. As the wait extended her anxiety heightened. She knew that Daniel had to be in possession of all three of her messages. What she did not know was why he had not sent a response. She was beginning to believe that he was never going to transmit his reply when something else happened that she did not expect.

Daniel was not due to be back at home for another three hours from this moment. The sight of him rushing through the front doorway of their home took Wendy by surprise. She watched as he stopped in the middle of the living-room before jumping up to her feet and stepping over to him.

“Why didn’t you answer my messages?” Wendy demanded as she moved towards him. “I’ve been worried out of my mind.”

Daniel was too busy with his own inquiry, at that same instant, to note what his wife was saying.

“Where’s Adam?” Daniel exclaimed with a look near to desperation.

Daniel’s counter inquiry took Wendy unawares. She hesitated for a moment to sort through her surprise and then she responded to the question.

“He’s not here. Why?”

“I need to speak with him,” Daniel, grimly, declared and without hesitation.

Wendy was made even more confused by this answer. She did not know what this had to do with anything. Shortly, this distraction from her worry began to annoy her, and she forced her attention back to subject that she wanted to discuss.

“You’re not leaving us. You’re not getting on that basestar.”

Daniel, quickly, recognized Wendy’s worry and responded to it with equivalent speed.

“I’m not going. I’m not going,” Daniel insisted in rapid succession.

Wendy was startled by this reply and paused to stare at her husband in wide-eyed amazement.

“You turned it down?” Wendy questioned with a ruffled brow.

“I never got an offer,” Daniel declared with a shake of his head.

Wendy was astonished to hear this. She stepped back to consider this with a look of shock. Daphne had entered the room a few seconds earlier. She too took this report with an expression of disbelief.

“You’re not going?” Daphne questioned with an inflection of incredulity.

“No,” Daniel reassured with a slight shake of his head.

Wendy awoke from her astonishment at that moment and rifled off the questions that Daniel’s report produced.

“Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you respond to my messages?”

“I busy making my own calls, and running around searching for answers,” Daniel returned with a perplexed shake of his head. 

“Busy with what?” Wendy challenged back.

Over the next five minutes, Daniel explained the whole series of events that brought him to this moment. He told his wife and daughter how surprised he was to learn that he was not going to get an offer. He told them he was busy trying to learn why others with lower seniority were given offers and not him. He told them about his discovery that another member of his family had been recruited into the Space Force and how this exempted him from service. He explained how he was out of the communication network for three-quarters of an hour during his flights to the Greyson Star-Factory and again to the Dominion Starship. And he explained his desperate search to find his youngest son.

“Adam? You think they recruited Adam?” Wendy cried out with a look of alarm.

“Who else,” Daniel retorted with finality. “He’s been working elbow to elbow with Eric Pettorino, the Director of Human Systems.”

Both Wendy and Daphne were stunned by the thought of this.

“He’s just fifteen,” Daphne insisted. “They can’t do that, can they?”

“The one thing that I have learned over the past three hours is that they can do anything they want,” Daniel corrected with emphasis.

Wendy awakened from the shock of this and woefully asked the question that was foremost in her thoughts.

“Where’s Adam?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel confessed. “I was hoping that he was here.”

“We have to find him,” Wendy declared with near frenzied trepidation. “They can’t take Adam. They can’t take my son.”

Daniel reached out to calm his wife. Just as he was about to speak the apartment door opened behind him and the room froze at the sight of the person standing there.

“What’s going on?” Adam questioned as he stepped through the doorway.

“Adam!” Daniel, loudly, acknowledged as he turned about to confront his son.

Wendy and Daphne followed Daniel’s lead and converged about the youngest member of the family.

“Did they recruit you?” Daniel questioned at a lesser volume.

“Me?” Adam questioned back with a start. “No, why would they send an offer to me?”

This answer momentarily confused all, and then Wendy asked the question that popped into her head.

“Where’s Sawyer?”


	28. The Invited

Sawyer's day started off as it had hundreds of times before. The only significantly unusual event this day was the prolonged presence of his mother at the start of it. Wendy prepared his breakfast and kissed him goodbye on his way out the door. This type of sendoff only occurred on those days when his mother had the day off from work. Normally, her presence at the start of his day was fleeting, if at all. She nearly always had her own preparations to make for the start of her work day. And seldom did she slow down to help her teenage children get ready for school. But when it was convenient to do so she attended to this task with relish. Sawyer took nearly as much pleasure from this attention as her.

After leaving the family home on this morning, Sawyer made his way to his school and began attending to his schedule of courses with slightly less than his usual diligence. His thoughts kept wandering off to a time to come later in that day. He had been invited to an event that was unlike anything he had ever been a part of before. His fascination for it kept his thoughts in constant conflict with what was happening in the now. School felt like more of an inconvenience on this day than it ever had in the past.

The event that was keeping Sawyer distracted was an arcade game championship. These things were not uncommon in the Star-Corp community, but it was the first such competition within RG01. It was also the first arcade game tournament that Sawyer was qualified to be in. He was looking forward to the competition and for the chance to associate with his competitors. The tournament included players from all five starships and was scheduled to be held on the Starship Dominion. Sawyer was granted time off from his classes so that he could be a participant.

This change in his class schedule made this coming event even more exciting for Sawyer. He had never heard of the school system giving way to an after-school activity. This deference to the tournament gave it importance in his mind. He could not stop himself from fantasizing about who might be in attendance for these games and what the winner would receive.

Sawyer was not the only one among his group of friends that was invited to this tournament. Oscar, Martin, Rebecca, Anthony, and CC had been given invitations too. They were all eager to be a part of the coming games and made plans to travel to it together. Three hours into his school day, Sawyer met up with the first of his friends on the promenade outside of the school. Anthony was giddy with excitement. Oscar and Martin came to the rendezvous together, one minute behind. They were followed by Rebecca and CC three minutes later.

The group greeted one another pleasantly, except CC. She had made it her practice to display a testy disregard towards Sawyer. Her belief that he was not attracted to her was the fuel that kept this attitude going. Despite this treatment, Sawyer was gracious in return. This was an apologetic expression and, in part, an effort to win back her affinity for him. His attraction to CC went up as suddenly as his regard for Sharon went down. He quickly learned that he could not abide being with someone that would think to use him as callously as Sharon had done. Because of this education, CC’s past affinity for him became doubled in value. This change of mindset notwithstanding, his read on CC was that she would not soon be receptive to his advances. Because of this read of the situation, Sawyer kept this inclination hidden for fear of another rejection.

“Everybody ready for this?” Anthony questioned with a jubilant smile.

They all confirmed that they were with lesser enthusiasm than Anthony. One minute later they were all inside a transport pod that was navigating its way to Docking Bay 5. Ten minutes behind that they were all crammed inside a shuttle that was just beginning to take flight for the Dominion. Nearly all the fifty-seven people aboard the shuttle were Physalia arcade gamers. For the past two years, this was the most popular game in the arcades, and all the frequent participants of this pastime were familiar with Physalia.

Sawyer recognized the faces of most of the gamers in the shuttle with him. He had on occasions spoken to half of them over the past two years. This level of familiarity was present in all that were there. The proximity of this congregation of acquainted arcade players gave rise to a boisterous thirty-minute trip. More than one passenger, which was not a part of this group, was perturbed by the distraction this created.

When the shuttle arrived aboard the Dominion, the arcade players came near to a race as they floated into the starship and for the adjacent transport pod bank. Members of this group filled the first six transport pods to arrive at the bank and rode them down to the promenade floor. Their exit point was just a short walk away from the Dominion 3 Auditorium. By the time Sawyer and his friends arrived, there were more than two-hundred arcade players, gathered from all nine starships, seated inside. A podium was positioned at the center of the stage and a large monitor behind that. The width of the monitor was near to the equal of the length of the stage. There were no people standing on the stage. Sawyer and his friends took seats eight rows back. They sat in the order of Rebecca, Martin, CC, Anthony, Sawyer and Oscar, from left to right. Shortly after sitting they began to converse with each other as they waited for the event to begin.

The ingress of more gamers slowed to a stop over the next twelve minutes. Two minutes later the doors at the back of the auditorium were closed. The Ushers that had been attending to this gathering departed to the other side of them. One minute later the lights dimmed by half. The murmur of voices from five hundred and sixty-three gamers went silent in response to this. Thirty seconds behind this a man appeared from behind the curtain to the right.

Sawyer noted that the man was tall, lean and had the physique of an athlete. This was noticeable even through his RG01 Space Force uniform. His hair was light brown and short. His face was chiseled and clean shaven. He walked quickly across the stage on a line that lead straight to the podium. As soon as he was positioned behind it, he stood there for a dozen seconds and scanned his audience, and then he began to speak.

“The first thing I should tell you is that you have been brought here under a false pretense. There is no Physalia Championship Playoff.”

Joshua Sloan paused to give time for this statement to cogitate within the thinking of all there.

“My name is Joshua Sloan. My job title here at RG01 is Director of Special Projects. This title is intentionally misleading. I say that because RG01 is a special project, and I am in-charge.”

Joshua paused so that his audience could assimilate this.

“RG01’s Board of Directors and Executive Officers answer to me. Everything here is jointly owned by all BX01 member Starcorps. I answer to the Starcorp League.”

Joshua paused to note their reaction with a slow pan of the auditorium.

“Physalia is the scientific name for a species of marine life indigenous to Earth’s Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans. Its common name is Man of War. The Physalia Warcraft is real. We spent the past five years designing, engineering and constructing it. We call it a Man of War or Mow for short.”

Joshua paused for effect.

“I have been given the task of building a war machine for the expressed purpose of fending off any military action directed at the starcorps from Earth. All of you have been unwittingly playing a role in the development of this war machine.”

A faint murmur of surprise rose from the audience in response to this revelation. It went silent after two seconds and Joshua continued.

“The preliminary designs of the cockpit, the control systems and battle tactics for the mows were put into the Physalia arcade game. Based on data that we acquired from your play over the past two years, we’ve made dozens of changes in the cockpit design, control systems and software. Every few months we would upgrade Physalia with these changes and test it by monitoring your play with the new version of the game. For the past two years, all of you have been our test pilots. We—I thought it unwise to start pilot training before settling on a final configuration of the cockpit and the control systems. Pilot training started six months-ago.”

Joshua’s audience watched and listened in transfixed silence as he explained this.

“We have two hundred and eighty-four mows.”

Joshua took a moment to note their reaction before speaking again.

“Recent events on Earth have caused us to accelerate our training timeline. We’ve discovered that the Alberta Alliance and its allies on Earth have been secretly constructing a space force. We believe this has been going on for more than a year. And we now believe that they are planning to move against us.”

This information generated an audible stir in the auditorium. Joshua paused for a moment to note this and to let it dissipate.

“For the past five years, the starcorps have been making extensive upgrades to all starships, factory-starships, agricultural-starships and construction-starships built before that year. These upgrades will make it possible for a starship to complete an interstellar trip in a matter of months instead of decades. We have found a way to do it. These upgrades have been completed in ninety percent of these ships. However, the BX01 League believes that our time has run out. As of thirty-two hours ago, the BX01 Starships are on the move away from the Earth. All official channels of communication between Earth and us are gone. We are anticipating that Earth will react to this, and we believe this reaction will involve their space force. I am under orders to activate the RG01 War Machine. And that is why you are here.”

Joshua activated the large display monitor behind him with a touch of his finger on the display screen of the com-link on the back of his left hand.

“These are your top three game scores from the past month.”

Joshua turned about so that he could see the names scrolling up the screen. He waited for all the names to past before changing the display with a brief manipulation of his com-link display.

“These are your loss ratios over the same period,” Joshua reported with a sober delivery. “The number on the left is the total number of levels that each of you played. The number in the middle is the number of times your avatar was killed throughout these levels. And the number on the right is the percentage.”

The list of their names and stats scrolled up the screen. Within two minute’s time, all the names had passed. After a pause, Joshua changed the display on the monitor behind him.

“These are your mission completion totals, attempts, wins, and percentages,” Joshua advised just as the display began to scroll.

This information moved up the screen as well. Two minutes later it was gone. Joshua gave them time to absorb the information he had just showed them before speaking again.

“We recruited three-hundred-and-seventeen skilled starcorp pilots and security force personnel from across the solar system. Here are their game scores over the last month.”

Joshua changed the display on the monitor behind him. As the data scrolled up the screen, the audience examined the numbers with murmurs of awe and shock. The scores were on the level of a novice by comparison to theirs. Five minutes later the last of this data scrolled off the screen. After this Joshua began to speak again.

“Simply put, after six months of training our recruits are not half as good as you.”

Joshua paused to give time for this information to be understood by all present. And then he continued in a solemn tone of voice.

“What’s at stake in this conflict is the future health and welfare of every man, woman, and child living in the starcorps. If it comes to a fight, we will be outnumbered—and by more than a little. I need the best mow pilots available.”

Joshua paused for five seconds to give that statement time to resonate within the thoughts of his audience. He then spoke again with a heavy inflection of finality.

“I need you—We need you.”

A silence gripped the audience as though they were all frozen in time. Joshua gave them a few seconds to absorb what he had just said. At the back end of this, he turned on the monitor behind him. A concise framework of the pay scale for RG01 Space Force Servicemen was laid out across the screen. One second after it had appeared Joshua began to speak again with less emphasis attached to his word.

“If you choose to join the RG01 Space Force you will be given the same contract as the other recruits.”

Joshua gave his audience a moment to note the pay scale behind him and then he spoke again with an inflection of regret.

“If you choose not to join, then you won’t be here when I come back. You have ten minutes to decide.”

After a pause to visually scan every sector of the auditorium, Joshua turned to his left and walked off the stage.

A rumble of movement and the murmur of voices rose from the auditorium floor at the instance that Joshua had disappeared behind the stage curtains. Forty-two people stood up to leave the auditorium, one after the other, over the span of the first thirty seconds. Many of them left exclaiming that they were not doing this in various phrasings. After this time, the continuous egress stopped. The drone of voices, which were speaking just a little above a whisper, could be heard across the auditorium. The sound that these many voices produced seemed to be laced with an inflection of surprise.

“We have to go,” Rebecca insisted with a shake of her head and in a hushed voice.

Rebecca, Martin, Anthony, Oscar, CC, and Sawyer were nearly in a daze up until this moment. Martin reached out to hold Rebecca’s hand. She clasped her other hand on top of his in that same moment.

“We can’t do this,” Rebecca continued with a hint of hysterics. “It’s a game. We were just playing a game.”

Martin did not know how to respond to this plea. The need for permission from the others prevented him from committing himself one way or the other. Sawyer had not committed himself to staying either, but a feeling of obligation would not allow him to leave. He took heavy breaths as he struggled with this.

“Well hell,” Oscar blurted out with enthusiasm. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m staying.”

Oscar leaned forward in his chair to look down the row at his friends as he continued to speak.

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. This is history. I’m doing this.”

Oscar’s outburst had little effect on Sawyer, CC and Martin, but it had an immense effect on Anthony.

“Are you crazy,” Anthony bellowed with a look of astonishment. “This isn’t a game. People are going to get killed. You tell him, Sawyer.”

All eyes turned to Sawyer, but he could produce no response. His mind was still locked in a struggle between what he wanted to do and what he felt he had to do. After a long pause of silence, Anthony concluded that he was not going to get the backing that he hoped for and elected to push his argument on his own.

“How many times have all of us been killed in that game?” Anthony questioned with a look of anxiety. “This is not our responsibility. We’re just kids.”

Anthony paused to give room for a reaction from someone other than Oscar. But at the end of this, it was Oscar that spoke.

“Come on Sawyer,” Oscar pleaded. “You know you have to do this. This is stupendous!”

Sawyer took a deep breath before looking to Oscar while shaking his head softly. After a brief pause to stare at his diminutive friend, he spoke.

“Anthony is right, you are crazy.”

“See!” Anthony stressed with finality. “We shouldn’t do this.”

An instant behind this Oscar asked a question of Sawyer with a heavy inflection of disbelief.

“You’re going to take off?”

Once again Sawyer gave his head a soft shake before responding with a sigh.

“No, I’m not leaving. But you’re still crazy.”

“Way to go, Sawyer,” Oscar howled with glee. “Between you and me that Earth Force doesn’t stand a chance.”

Anthony was shocked to point that he jumped up to his feet before speaking with an inflection of incredulity.

“You’re both crazy!”

Anthony looked down the row to cross his gaze with Rebecca’s before speaking with vehemence.

“I’m with you, Rebecca. I’m getting out of here. Anyone else coming?”

Anthony looked back and forth across his row of friends. Rebecca stood up almost immediately. She held on to Martin’s hand as she did.

“Come on, Martin, let’s go,” Rebecca pleaded with a mournful stare.

Martin remained seated as he looked up at his girlfriend with an indecisive expression. After a moment of thought, he responded to her request.

“You go. I have to stay.”

“No, you can’t stay,” Rebecca begged. “You can’t do this.”

“I have to,” Martin insisted as he pulled his hand away from Rebecca’s. “You go. I need you to do go.”

Rebecca began to sob softly after hearing this. A few seconds later she began to slip down the row towards Anthony. He, in turn, began to move past Sawyer on his way to the aisle. Just as Rebecca passed CC, she looked back at her and spoke.

“You coming?”

CC looked up at her friend and answered her query with a mixture of surprise and determination in her expression.

“No, I’m staying.”

Sawyer looked across the empty seat between him and CC with a hint of astonishment in his expression. It was his guess that CC’s answer was prompted by his own. An instant later he concluded that he needed to give her a way out.

“You should go,” Sawyer instructed in a firm voice. “No one expects you to do this.”

CC returned Sawyer’s look behind this remark. She immediately took offense to this instruction from him and reacted to it with more than a hint of defiance.

“I was invited here too,” CC insisted. “And my scores are better than most in this auditorium. I’m not going anywhere.”

Sawyer took notice that CC’s decision to stay was strengthened by his suggestion that she leave. Because of this, he elected to say no more about it. Rebecca was equally convinced of her determination to stay and returned to making her way down the row. When she and Anthony got to the aisle, they both paused there to look back at their friends. Several seconds later they turned away and left the auditorium.

Anthony and Rebecca were not the only ones to leave over the time span of the next several minutes. Many left in twos and threes. Between the times that Joshua left the stage and his return to it a total of two-hundred and fifty-two gamers left the auditorium. The remainder sat in silence as they watched Joshua make his way to the podium. All eyes were fixated on him as he stood behind the podium and panned his gaze across the auditorium. All ears were attentive to him as he began to speak a dozen seconds later.

“Is there anyone else that wishes to leave?” Joshua questioned in a solemn tone.

Joshua looked about the auditorium for another ten seconds. When no one moved, he looked down at his com-link, manipulated the display with a few touches of his index finger and registered all there before him into the RG01 Space Force. When he was done with this, he looked up at his audience and spoke once again.

“Welcome to RG01UTC2182 Space Force.”

Thirty minutes later, from behind this same podium, Joshua Sloan made his broadcast to the entire RG01 Starcorp community.


	29. Parting of the Ways

“Where is my son?” Wendy questioned in an insistent tone of address.

The young looking official, Ryan Gorman, showed no sign that he had been affected by the intensity of Wendy’s inquiry. He held his gaze and his posture as he had done several times before on this day. The job of soothing the concerns of parents with children recruited into the Space Force fell to him. Wendy and Daniel Beck was the sixth meeting he had like this in the past three hours.

“Your son is aboard the Orion,” Gorman explained with a bland delivery. “He’s unavailable right now.”

“Then take me to him,” Wendy demanded with an angry stare. “I want to see my son.”

Daniel had nothing to say during this part of the exchange. Over the course of the past five hours, his worry that his son had been shanghaied into the RG01 Space Force transitioned into the belief that he had joined of his own volition. There was nothing said or given to him by a government official that brought him to this conclusion. It was the weight of rumors and reports that many individuals had declined the same recruitment offer that Sawyer supposedly accepted. The most significant of these reports were the ones that came from Anthony and Rebecca. Daniel’s only motivation at this time was his desire to see his son before the Orion split off from the group.

“Your son will send you a video message as soon as he can, Mrs. Beck,” Gorman assured without expression.

“I don't want a video of my son,” Wendy roared back at him. “I want my son.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Beck,” Gorman countered in a soft voice. “But that’s not possible.”

Wendy was made all the angrier by this reply. This report was the only thing she heard of late. The Dominion Administrative Tower was in turmoil. Everyone inside was doing something in preparation for the break-off the Orion. Everyone there that she had spoken to before this had no information about her son, but all seemed to know that it was impossible to get her on, or Sawyer off, the Orion. The young-looking official standing before her was the first person she met there that was not deflecting her inquiry to someone else.

Wendy did not know if she should be pleased or angry about this. She had spent the previous two hours speaking with people that had no idea what was going on. The only thing they could tell her was that no one was getting on or off the Orion that did not need to be on or off it. When she demanded to be made an exception to this rule they always passed her on to someone else. This line of inquiry is what brought her to the official standing in front of her at this moment, and he was not referring her to anyone else.

"I want to speak to Director Sloan," Wendy insisted after a moment of thought.

"Admiral Sloan is aboard the Orion, making preparations for departure," Gorman reported with a succinct delivery. "He's not seeing anyone."

No part of Gorman’s response was untrue. He had been given this information so that he could dole it out to whoever came around to this inquiry. He knew little more than what the other people that Wendy spoke to knew. He understood that his job was to end her inquiry and not to resolve it. Working towards that end, he chose to respond to Wendy’s questions in the most bureaucratic manner that he could produce.

Gorman’s purpose did not escape the notice of Daniel. By this time in the conversation, he was convinced that he and Wendy had reached the end of the line. Now that he knew they would be getting a video message from Sawyer; he could think of no reason for continuing this endeavor. After a moment of thought behind Gorman’s last remark, he expressed this thinking with a concise remark.

“Honey, we should go.”

“No!” Wendy argued back at her husband. “We need to find Sawyer. We have to get him off that ship, and we have to go back to Earth.”

Daniel knew better than to argue with his wife at this moment. He understood that her distress was governing much of what she was saying. He had no doubt that a challenge to her assertion would exasperate the situation. This reasoning was his motivation for backing away from this exchange once again.

“Do you understand that my son is just seventeen years old?” Wendy raged at Gorman. “He’s too young to be in a war.”

Gorman continued to display no reaction to Wendy’s rampage. He countered her declaration without hesitating to think about his reply.

“All minors were emancipated when they signed on. They agreed to this.”

“I don’t care what he agreed to,” Wendy yelled back at the official with a flail of her arms. “My son didn’t know that we’re leaving when we get to Mars. You should have spoken to us before enlisting our son into your war.”

Wendy’s animation caused Gorman to flinch perceptibly. Despite this movement, he held his ground and resumed his passive attention to his guest. He did not invite Wendy and Daniel to sit down even though they were standing a dozen feet inside his office. He did not want to give them the impression that he was interested in entertaining a prolonged conversation on this subject. And he wanted to give them every indication that he had other matters to attend to. At the end of Wendy’s outburst, he gave his reply with an erect bearing and with a minimal of movement and words.

“It’s his war too, Mrs. Beck.”

“No, it’s not,” Wendy disputed forcefully. “My son is a minor. This is not his war.”

Once again Gorman betrayed no indication that his argument or his feelings had been affected by Wendy’s words. His response was stiff and direct.

“Your son understood what he was doing when he signed on. Everything was explained to him.”

Wendy judged by this report that she was getting nowhere with this man standing before her. Despite this, she feared to let him go equally as much as she was annoyed by his responses. She knew that if she left his office, it would take her another thirty minutes to get to someone with the time and inclination to give her some attention. This worry motivated her to lower her tone and to make her request sound as reasonable as possible.

“I want to speak to my son,” Wendy stated behind a calm demeanor. “I want him to know that we’re going to stay behind on Mars.”

This report had the effect on Gorman that she wanted. He had no ready response for it and paused to reflect on it. Within a second of this reaction, Daniel gave expression to the effect that her words had on him.

“No, we’re not,” Daniel contradicted with a resolute shake of his head.

Wendy reacted to her husband’s repudiation with a sharp turn and an angry glare in his direction.

“You’re not making this decision for us,” Daniel continued with gently intoned defiance. “This is our home. Daphne and Adam belong here. This is where they want to be.”

Wendy’s anger was greatly abated by her husband’s reasoning. She suspected that her children would want to stay in the starcorp even if she did not. And she feared that they might do just that if Daniel chose not to leave with her.

“They want our son to fight their war, Daniel,” Wendy submitted with a wistful stare. “What happens if he gets killed? Are you willing to trade Sawyer’s life for this? Do you think Daphne and Adam want this?”

“No, I don’t,” Daniel answered with a look of regret. “But I think they would choose to stay if given a choice. And I’m not going to let you take that away from Adam.”

Wendy had no doubt what Daniel meant by his last remark. She understood that her prognostications were empty threats if Daniel did not follow her lead. Her instinct was to yell at him for not agreeing with her on this, but her intellect told her that this was a useless reaction. She knew that she needed his backing. Without it, the best that she could hope for is a division within her family.

“I can’t do this without you,” Wendy pleaded to her husband. “They’re going to get our son killed, Daniel. We can’t let that happen. We have to get him back.”

Daniel did not know how to reply to his wife’s plaintive request. He understood the depth of fear and emotion that was behind it. The last thing he wanted to do at that moment was add to her pain. Because of this conflict within him, he said nothing as he returned his wife’s gaze. Gorman seized the opportunity in his stead and pointed out what he knew to be the reality of the situation.

“It’s too late,” Gorman reported with a blank expression. “Your son will be leaving with the Orion.”

Overwhelmed by the weight of resistance against her, Wendy resorted to the last tactic available to the desperate. She began to shout.

“I want my son,” Wendy demanded. “You can’t have my son.”

With his usual straight-faced demeanor, Gorman gave his return to her assertion with an inflection of finality.

“It’s too late.”

Wendy took a moment to study the face of the official in front of her. During this time, she grudgingly concluded that this was as far as she was going to get. She then turned to Daniel and searched for his lead for the first time since leaving their apartment. Daniel took her by the hand and gently guided her out the office door.

Daniel was eager to hear and see Sawyer’s video message. He had no doubt that the message would be addressed to all the registered occupants within the home and routed to them individually. But Daniel did not want to see this video for the first time through his com-link goggles. He wanted to see it fully displayed on a wall monitor with all the nuances of his son’s expression clear to see. He was anxious for visual reinforcement of the pride he was feeling for Sawyer. This feeling had nothing to do with the fact that he was going off to war. It had everything to do with the idea that Sawyer chose to go off to war. Daniel could not help but hope that he would have done the same had it been him at seventeen years of age.

It took Daniel and Wendy fifteen minutes to make their way home. Once they were there, they spent the next four hours waiting for a video message from their eldest son. Daphne and Adam sat through this vigil with them. At the end of this time the video message they were waiting for beeped in on the com-links of all four. Daniel sent the message to a wall display with the voice command “Wand, transfer video message to living-room monitor.” The other family members used the voice command, “Wand, save video message.” to record the message. For five minutes the four members of the Beck family watched in silence while Sawyer explained his decision to join the RG01 Space Force. They held on to every word he said. They noted every gesture he made and cataloged every twitch.

In the message, Sawyer told his parents that he could not back away from this calling. He told them that he did this for himself, his family and the entire Star-Corp community. He explained how he was ideally suited for this task and how doing less than what he did would have haunted him for the remainder of his life. In the end, he said that he loved them all. And then he said goodbye.

Wendy replayed Sawyer’s message a dozen times more and watched each time with eyes filled with tears. Through it all, her brain continued to search for ways to separate her child from this course. The other members of her family gave her space and quiet. They believed she needed to come to terms with what had happened. As the time went by the apartment began to fill with a growing fear that this would never happen. This worry came to a culmination when a bulletin was E-mailed to all within the convoy.

“Oh my god,” Wendy huffed out after examining the message that was scrolling across her com-link display. “They’re taking my son.”

Daniel rushed to Wendy’s side on the couch. He took her hand to give support. She gripped his tightly as she looked at him with a terrified expression. A second later Adam accessed the wall monitor and directed it to show a live feed of the Orion Basestar. It was every bit as large as the biggest starship. It was designated a basestar because its purpose was to house all the accoutrements of war.

“They’re taking my son away from me, Daniel,” Wendy whimpered to her husband. “They’re taking my son.”

“We’ll see him again,” Daniel assured with a whisper. “He’ll come back to us.”

The Beck family watched as the basestar pushed away from the convoy. Ten minutes later it was a speck in the distance. Five minutes beyond that it was no longer in sight. Wendy spent most of the next hour sobbing into her husband’s chest. For the next two weeks, she stayed home from work. Depression and worry kept her in a perpetual daze. She awakened from this when a live video of Mars, and the three-hundred Star-Corp spaceships parked in its orbit, loomed large within the monitors of the RG01 Starcorp convoy.


	30. Time to Go

“RG01 has just settled into its parking orbit,” Dana Rucker reported as she entered Chairperson Eric Gourmand’s office. “All of the starcorps are now parked in Mars orbit.”

Gourmand did not look up from the tablet that he was studying to visually acknowledge the presence of his Chief of Staff. Instead of responding to this report, he barked out the question that was most on his mind at this moment.

“Any information on the Orion?”

“Nothing so far,” Rucker reported with a shake of her head.

“Damn!”

Gourmand’s outburst was due to his impatience. He knew that a message from Admiral Sloan could arrive at any time within the next several hours. But this fact did nothing to prevent him from being anxious about the wait. The departure of the BX01 Starcorp from Earth Space was done in silence for the precise purpose of keeping the United Front Pact States in the dark about their intentions for as long as possible. It was there hope that this would buy them a week of indecision within the United Front Pact states. Transmissions from Earth revealed that the Earth was unaware of their plan to leave the solar system. But their actions were the opposite of indecisive.

Gourmand and the Starcorp League were caught off guard by the quick response of the United Front Pact states. Their plan counted on the Earth states devoting a week or more to the study of their sudden retreat to Mars space. Images of a large space force rising out of the Earth’s atmosphere, less than three days after BX01’s departure, was a major complication in their plans.

“Should we start moving people?” Rucker questioned after waiting a moment for Gourmand to give the order of his own volition.

Because of his position as the Chairperson of the Starcorp League Gourmand became the administrative head of this gathering by default. It was his job to prepare and organize this fleet for the jump to Proxima Centauri. The successful completion of this task was dependent on him having enough time to orchestrate it. The fast-approaching United Front Pact Space Force was denying him the time he needed to affix the entire fleet with star-drives. The work to do this was not a large endeavor when compared to switching out the primary thrusters or constructing a new power plant. However, it did require a certain amount of technical expertise to do it, and it did involve reconfiguring the power distribution system. This latter part meant that the ship’s thrusters had to be inoperable for three to four hours. At this time in the gathering, sixty percent of the fleet had their star-drives installed. Rigging the remainder of the fleet with them was going to require more time than what Gourmand had to work with.

Gourmand’s Chief of Staff, Dana Rucker, was inquiring about a plan they contrived after learning that the original plan was unworkable under this new time constraint. The arrival of Starcorp RG01 was the final piece to this alternate plan. Its presence gave them the capability to work this plan to its maximum potential. Star-drives were installed in the RG01 starships before they made the journey to Mars. Their presence gave them the additional room they needed to move all the people from the starships without star-drives into starships that did. Accomplishing this would be time-consuming but far less so than installing star-drives in the remaining spaceships.

The most time expensive part of this alternate plan was not the movement of the people. It was the movement of their space capsules. All the spaceships were required to have a sufficient number of space capsules to accommodate its entire compliment of passengers. Also, all starships were required to have and to maintain a five percent excess of seating within their space capsules. This was not sufficient room for the hundreds of thousands that needed seats in a starship with a star-drive. To fix this problem the space capsules from the starships without star-drives needed to be transferred into the docking bays of the starships with star-drives. Once there, they had to be secured and tied into the starship’s power supply and communication system. This was something that the starships were configured to do in the case of emergencies. But the act of doing it, especially on this scale, was going to cost them a dozen hours and probably more.

“No, not yet,” was Gourmand’s response to Rucker’s inquiry about commencing the movement of space capsules.

Rucker was surprised by this answer. After a second of thought, she dared to ask the question she thought he needed to hear.

“Are you sure about that, sir? If we start now, we could be out of here in less than fifteen hours.”

Gourmand had already computed that. He also knew that he needed twice that much time to configure the remaining starships with star-drives and that the United Front Pact Space Force was twenty hours away. What he did not know was the disposition of Admiral Sloan and his war machine.

“Let’s give him two more hours,” Gourmand returned with a soft shake of his head.

They were seven minutes away from that two-hour limit when Joshua’s communication came in. Gourmand was in his office with Rucker when he initiated the playback. All the other Starcorp League Representatives were tied into this viewing by an intranet connection. When the wall monitor came on Joshua’s face nearly filled the height of the screen. His expression was solemn. His tone was grave.

“We have just completed an engagement with the UFP Space Force. I lost seventeen mows and fourteen pilots. I estimate the UFP lost ten times that many spacefighters. The bulk of their forces is scattered. I have every reason to believe they will reform for a second attack. That should be sometime within the next three to four hours if we remain on station. The rate of fall of the UFP Space Force has been slowed by fifty-seven percent. We calculate the UFP Armada’s ETA to Mars between twenty-four and twenty-seven hours. This time-range is contingent upon how long it takes them to regroup and to accelerate to their original rate of fall. A second engagement is not factored into this.”

After his last remark, Joshua took a long pause to arrange his thoughts in his head. At the end of this, he began to speak again with greater severity in his tone.

“The UFP Armada now knows what we can do. That is what they learned in our first engagement. I have no doubt that a second engagement with the UFP Armada will take a substantially higher toll on my fighters.”

Once again Joshua paused. This time, it was done to give weight to the words he had just spoken. After this, he spoke his final words behind a plainly visible inhale and exhale.

“What are your orders?”

This report momentarily locked Gourmand’s brain into a series of thoughts about options and possibilities. He ignored the beeps on his com-link that were being generated by the incoming calls of League Representatives. Several seconds into this Rucker interrupted him with her assessment.

“It’s not enough time.”

Gourmand was fully aware that Joshua’s war machine did not buy him the time that he needed. But it did give him the hope that they could.

“But it’s more than what we had before,” Gourmand corrected with an inflection of optimism. “We need to speed up the work on the star-drives.”

“What about the space capsules?” Rucker questioned back with the intonation of concern.

“Forget the capsules,” Gourmand returned with a decisive and rapid response. “We’re leaving with everyone and everything. Nothing gets left behind.”

Gourmand knew that he was taking a gamble. He knew that they needed a minimum of thirty hours to make their escape. But Joshua’s initial success gave him the belief that this additional time could be acquired. Up until this moment, Gourmand had no way of knowing what degree of success or failure he could expect from Joshua’s war machine. This report gave him a measure of its potential. By his computation, Joshua had the numbers to buy him the time that he needed. And by his measure of importance, there was no price that Joshua’s fighters could pay that was too high.

Gourmand spent the next five minutes recording and transmitting his orders to Joshua. In the recording, he made it clear that he needed the arrival time of the UFP Armada pushed back eight hours more. This number was based on Joshua’s twenty-four-hour ETA calculation and a two-hour buffer. He stressed the importance of this time requirement. He emphasized how much was at stake. After transmitting this message into the void between him and Joshua, he sat waiting in his office for Joshua’s reply. Rucker infrequently interrupted this vigil with reports on the progress of the retrofitting and the occasional problem that needed his decision to resolve. Five hours later Joshua reported back.

Joshua’s appearance on the monitor was sullen. Several seconds after his image appeared, he went into his message with a grave delivery.

"An additional one-hundred and eighty-eight mows are gone. The number of pilots lost in this engagement is unknown at this time. We are still searching for survivors. I'm down to seventy-nine Mows. Enemy losses are substantially higher. But their losses are negligible by comparison to their overall number. The UFP Armada's ETA is estimated at twenty-eight hours, give or take three hours. A third engagement will likely decimate my fighter force. When that happens my entire command is lost. I need your permission to break away now, while the UFP Armada is reforming."

“That’s it, they did it,” Rucker exulted after hearing the entire message.

Gourmand displayed no overt reaction to the message. More than anything else, Joshua’s report seemed to push him further into thought. It took him several seconds of contemplation to decide how to respond and little more than a minute to do it. In his return message, Gourmand instructed Joshua to remain on station until he received orders for him to do otherwise. He also advised Joshua to avoid a third engagement if possible. He closed his message with a promise to give him permission to break away at his earliest convenience.

“We have the time,” Rucker asserted with an inflection of challenge. “Why wait?”

“Something could go wrong on our end,” Gourmand explained defensively. “I need Joshua in position if it does. He has to stay within striking distance until we’re all away.”

Without the presence of the Orion, Gourmand understood that the UFP Armada could race ahead without bothering to reform into battle lines. This would subtract from Admiral Sloan’s ETA, and Gourmand wanted every bit of that time. A second fear of Gourmand’s was that UFP might get their hands on a star-drive and pursue them across the stars.

“How far along are we with the retrofit?”

“We’re at about eighty-five percent,” Rucker reported with little thought given to the number.

Gourmand pondered this report for a moment before giving Rucker her instructions.

“Okay, we’ll launch in two groups. Launch everything that we can in the first group minus any ships we need to complete the retrofitting within the next twenty hours.”

“And us?” Rucker spoke with a questioning inflection.

“You’ll go with BX01 in the first group,” Gourmand answered behind a hesitation. “Make arrangements for me aboard one of the starships leaving in the second group.”

“I’ll make arrangements for the both of us,” Rucker corrected without hesitation.

Gourmand paused to give this correction a thought before concurring with an, “okay.”

Rucker acknowledged this with a nod. She then turned away and hurried to the door.

This first interstellar jump was regarded as an uncertain endeavor. It was given this distinction because of the distance they would be traveling. The people that perfected the science of the star-drive experimented with small jumps. These trials provided them with a fairly-thorough understanding of what to expect. They knew that it was impossible to see anything external to the ship visually. Radar was effectively non-existent in null space-time. The temporal field absorbed it. It was also known that the gravity wells in real space created their own version of tides and eddies in null space. Because of these factors, plus the distance of this jump and the mass numbers of people involved, they felt a need to be extra careful.

The central worry of the scientists and engineers was that the star-drive might malfunction and cause the spaceship to drop out of null space-time. Because of the distance, they were traveling it was understood that an errant star-drive could put the lives of all aboard in peril. This was because a call for help could take years or even decades to reach the nearest receiver. And once the mayday was received the task of going to their rescue would involve finding the vicinity of space-time that the spaceship dropped into. This problem would be magnified if this spaceship drifted off course before dropping out of null space-time. This concern was the impetus behind the decision for group jumps. Spaceships in null space-time, which were nearby in distance and time, were capable of cross communication via their temporal fields. Their ability to stay close together was enhanced by their numbers. The reason for this was the magnetic fields they produce.

While in null space-time the magnetic sensors on spaceships could discern the gravity wells that existed across thousands of parsecs of the space-time continuum. The larger the time window they created, the greater their field of detection. From this data from they could etch out a single star system or dozens of them. But two spaceships launched into null space-time side by side with time dilations that were just a tad more than slightly askew would be invisible and deaf to each other. Multiple spaceships nearby and with identical time dilation windows had the advantage of a combined magnetic signature. The greater the number of spaceships the larger the signature. The increased size of this magnetic signature made it easier for the members to stay in the group. The larger the magnetic signature the further away in null space-time a stray spaceship had to be to lose contact with the group. This fact made it easier for each ship to stay synched to the same time dilation window.

It took near to an hour for Two-hundred and seventeen starships and one-hundred and fifty-seven interplanetary spaceships to ready themselves for this first interstellar jump. When all the spaceships reported in at their ready positions, the procession began to push away from Mars. From a distance, which was far enough back to see all of them, they resembled a small swarm of bees. It took ten minutes for this swarm to disappear into the void. It was estimated that it would take them another twenty hours to reach a speed that enabled all in the procession to open a time window.

Twenty-one hours had passed when Gourmand first heard that the remaining ships were ready for the jump. Within a minute of hearing that report he ordered all spaceships to commence launch. He then sent his final order to Joshua Sloan. In this message, he gave him permission to break away from the UFP Armada, and he ordered Joshua not to allow his star-drive to fall into UFP hands. Behind this order, he instructed Joshua to report to the BX01 Starcorp League in Proxima Centauri and gave his thanks and his wish for their good luck.

It was another ninety minutes later when Gourmand sent out his final transmission. He was situated inside a space capsule aboard the Starship Winstead when he recorded it. The Winstead, along with the entire second group of the BX01 Starcorp Fleet, was accelerating away from Mars by this time and had been doing so for the past forty minutes. The message was not directed at the Orion. It was sent to everyone in the Sol System and it was transmitted un-coded. In it, he outlined the motives and the intentions of the starcorp community. He then offered his best wishes to the people of Earth and then he said, “Good-bye.”


	31. The Jump

The first ship wide launch stations alert, which came blaring through all fixed monitors, startled Wendy to the extent that she visibly jumped at the instant of hearing it. Wendy knew that this event was coming, but she did not expect it to occur so soon after their arrival to Mars. The Amaterasu had just settled into a parking orbit around the red planet ten hours earlier. She was expecting several days and hopefully several weeks to pass before they would make their departure. It was her understanding that all the starcorps would leave there together and all knew that they were a day away from finishing the retrofits. 

A call to launch stations was the last thing Wendy wanted to hear at this moment. She feared that a launch from Mars would separate her from Sawyer by more than four light years. This fear was supported by the common knowledge that the Basestar Orion was not in Mars orbit. It was also known that when the fleet broke orbit with Mars, it would not stop until it reached Proxima Centauri. Wendy’s fears were enhanced further by the absence of any official news regarding the Orion’s activities. There were no updates on the events that were transpiring between the starcorps and Earth. This silence was the fuel that nourished a fleet-wide rumor mill.

While Wendy was spending most her awake periods sitting at home and worrying about Sawyer, Daniel, Daphne and Adam were devoting the bulk of their spare time compiling rumors about the Orion and Earth. There was plenty of this to be had. The most prevalent report regarding the Orion was that it was engaged in battle with a large force of UFP Space Fighters. The widespread circulation of this rumor gave it credence in the minds of Daniel, Daphne and Adam. Despite this, none of them repeated it to Wendy.

There was one piece of news that the Starcorp League was eager to televise throughout the fleet. This information spoke of the star-drive, the interstellar jump that they were all soon to make and their combined futures away of the Sol System. This was done so that everyone would know that the star-drive was thoroughly tested, and safe and that their futures had enormous potential for prosperity and contentment. They gave details on what to expect and showed test results to support their claims. This data was repeatedly broadcast in the hope that it would ease the anxieties of the populace.

The launch stations alert was the first interruption in the stream of continuous information and support messages that the Starcorp League had been broadcasting since their arrival to Mar’s orbit. From the moment that the alert began the fleet’s populace seemed to go into a flurry. Within those spaceships that were selected to leave, the alert advised their occupants that they had one hour to get to their space capsules. This was more than enough time but far less than what was given for a normal launch.

The Becks began making their preparations for launch as well, but this they did with less enthusiasm than most. Wendy’s efforts to prepare for launch was almost nonexistent. The idea of leaving Sawyer behind was difficult for her to consider. For her, mustering the resolve to do just that was a difficult mindset to sustain. Despite this feeling, she managed to get into her launch and entry suit and her space capsule with fifteen minutes to spare. Much of the credit for this on time performance belonged to Daniel, Daphne and Adam. Their gentle urgings kept Wendy in motion despite her tearful despair.

The Amaterasu began to push its way out of Mars orbit fifteen minutes past the launch station deadline. The Beck family, minus Sawyer, observed their departure through the large monitors inside their space capsule. The orange planet looked as if it was falling away from them in slow motion. Ten minutes after the commencement of the launch Mars was a bright orange dot against the black backdrop of space. They were eighteen hours into the launch, three hours away from their time jump, when the captain of the Amaterasu made his first announcement to all aboard since the start of their launch. A live image of him appeared on the monitors as he spoke.

"This is the Captain speaking. I have news that I am sure you will be interested in hearing. This report just came in from BX01. The RG01 war machine participated in two engagements with a large force of UFP spacefighters that were approaching Mars. The report says that our forces have destroyed more than eight-hundred enemy spacefighters to a loss of two-hundred and five of our own. The war machine that we built has won the time that we needed to escape. The remaining starcorp spaceships are accelerating away from Sol as I speak. We are out of danger. The UFP cannot stop us now. We are too far away. Our star-drives will go online long before they get within sensor range. When we go through the time jump, we will be beyond the reach of UFP forces. We are three hours away from this event. Good luck to all of us."

At the hearing of this there were visual, and audible, displays of relief and approval from within every space capsule aboard the Amaterasu. But there were no cheers to be heard. The minds of most were preoccupied with thoughts about the upcoming interstellar jump. A distant event that had no effect upon them carried little weight within their thinking. The Becks were one of the few exceptions to this. The Captain’s report was all that they could think about at that moment. Their fears for Sawyer were elevated to great new heights. Up until then they could entertain the hope that this division between Earth and the starcorps would not escalate into an armed conflict. Now all that they could think about were the two-hundred and five losses.

The Beck family knew that Sawyer was chosen to be a part of the RG01 fighter force. This was explained to Daniel and Wendy during their search for their son. This knowledge deprived them of any hope that Sawyer would miss the worse of the fighting. Their great fear at that moment was that Sawyer might be a member of the two-hundred and five fighters that were lost in the fighting.

This worry was all that Wendy could think about over the next three hours. Even as the announcements from the Captain gave reports of their narrowing approach to jump velocity, she gave no thought to this information. It was not until the Captain announced that they were counting down for the jump that she gave it any attention. The heightened tension within the capsule provided a second reason for Wendy to fix her attention onto the large monitor in the center of the capsule.

All eyes within the space capsule were focused on the large monitors at the center. Multiple views of the collection of spaceships about the Amaterasu could be seen on them. Each spaceship had its thrusters burning at full blast. A readout along the bottom perimeter of the monitor indicated that the Amaterasu was moving at 39.834% of light speed and accelerating. The Captain had advised all that the temporal field generator would be triggered when they reached 40% of light speed.

The Beck family was seated in a square formation. Daniel and Wendy were in acceleration pods that were situated directly behind Adam and Daphne. They too had their attentions fixed on the monitors at the center of the capsule. Their worries for Sawyer could not eclipse the enormity of this event. They were both intrigued by and afraid of this coming event.

Nearly all the occupants within this starcorp convoy shared some degree of fear that something might go wrong. A popular concern was that they might run into something. This fear was driven by the fact that spaceships were virtually blind in null space-time. Visual and radio scanning was impossible. The scientists attempted to belay this fear by explaining that there was nothing in null space-time to run into other than each other. And they gave their assurance that the magnetic sensors on all spaceships would warn them of any impending collisions.

Another fear the populace had was that they would emerge inside a star or planet. This worry persisted despite the assurance of the scientists that the magnetic sensors could be used to safely steer them back into space-time. The reason for their continued fear of this was the limited weight of evidence behind this assurance. This contention of the scientists was based on small experimental time jumps within the void between solar systems. A jump from one side of this space to the other was considered by most to be a far more dangerous endeavor. Many people within the convoy disputed the claim that there was little risk in this jump.

The most entrenched worry within the populace was about all that they did not apprehend about this unexamined segment of the universe. Null space-time was an unknown, for the most part. The imaginations of the populace were forever at work envisioning mishaps and dangers waiting to occur inside this abyss. Much of what was fancied was discredited by others within the community and to the satisfaction of most. That which was not discredited circulated about the starcorp communities like an airborne chemical weapon of mass destruction.

The science community could not deny the possibility of some unforeseen peril, but when it came to capabilities of the magnetic sensors their claims were emphatic. Their null space-time experiments convinced them that the magnetic sensors on spaceships would enable them to avoid large objects while steering across the threshold between null and real space-time. They knew that the sensors range expanded as the spaceships dialed into null space-time and contracted as they came out. On the sensor screen it appeared as if the universe around them was shrinking when they went in and expanding as they came out. This effect brought whole star systems onto their magnetic sensor screen while making asteroid size objects too small to sense. When they dialed out of null space-time the reverse was the effect. The universe looked to be expanding. Small objects in real space-time grew increasingly discernable. As this happened, distant objects moved out beyond the range of the sensors. Because of this effect, the scientists and engineers had no doubt that spaceships could safely navigate the perils of reentry into real space-time.

“Two minutes.”

The voice of the Captain boomed through the speakers in the space capsules throughout the starship. All eyes became fixed on the large monitors in front of them a second behind this announcement. The only sound to be heard was the whir and beeps of the electronics all around them. The visuals on the monitors displayed images of the space around them. In appearance, they looked to be fixed panoramas of the universe. The black of space glowed with the illuminations of an unknown number of pinpoints of light. Mixed in with these images were visuals of the convoy all about the Amaterasu. Two minutes later a report from the Captain enunciated in all the space capsules.

"Activating temporal field generator in five—four—three—two—one."

An instant behind this countdown the monitors that were displaying external images of the surrounding space erupted with static. Everyone inside the Becks' space capsule waited in silence for the next report. Ten minutes later the sound of the Captain's voice filled the space capsules again.

"This is the Captain again; I am happy to report that all systems are good. The Amaterasu is intact and on course. All spaceships within the convoy are now synced together and accounted for. Our arrival at Proxima Centauri will be in roughly three null space hours and twenty-five hundred real space hours from now. We are on our way."

Nearly all the occupants of the space capsule that the Becks were in demonstrated some expression of relief after hearing this. Wendy wept in silence.


	32. Action Stations

“Holy crap!”

Commander Ronald Noonan’s astonished outburst went mostly unnoticed by all that heard it. They were too busy being surprised by what they were seeing. The digital animation on the large monitor in front of them was exhibiting a presence that was two times larger than their intelligence community projected. The UFP Armada that they spent the past two days approaching had just been enveloped by their sensor field. The radio transmissions that they had been tracking, the flickers of reflective light that they had been optically following, was suddenly a discernible mass.

“Dominic, give me a count,” Joshua bellowed out at the crewman two positions removed from him.

Joshua was seated in the command capsule of the Basestar Orion. The circular chamber had fifty acceleration pods that were constructed into the floor at a forty-five-degree angle down. The chairs were arranged in three successive rings and all were occupied by an RG01 Space Force crewman. Most of the personnel in there were superfluous. It did not take more than five crewmen to steer and control the basestar. And much of what they did was simply supervise and direct Orion’s computer. The remaining crewman were there to fill the seats, operate engineering robots that floated free throughout the basestar and wait their turns as second and third team bridge officers. The crewman that were essential to the operation of the Orion at that moment were seated in a cluster around Joshua.

“The computer is holding on a count of Three-thousand-eight-hundred and seventy-three spaceships, Admiral,” Dominic reported back after taking a moment to retrieve the data.

Seated next to Joshua was Commander Noonan, the commanding officer of Orion’s fighter-force. He was initially slated to be a wing commander. When he and the other veteran space pilots and security officers failed to measure up to the level of Pettorino’s test pilots, he was given the job of Spacefighter Commander. In this capacity it was his job to organize and prepare Orion’s fighter force for battle. At this moment, it was his function to relay orders to his wing commanders and to designate tactics to effect Joshua’s objectives.

“How are we supposed to win against thirty-eight-hundred spacefighters?” Noonan questioned with an inflection of incredulity.

“We don’t have to win,” Joshua returned in a softly somber voice. “We just have to delay them.”

Noonan took no comfort from this. After giving his head a brief shake and exhaling with a huff and a smile, he responded to Joshua’s declaration with more than a little sarcasm.

“Yeah, I believe that was the plan at the Alamo.”

_~~~~~line break~~~~~_

The UFP Armada had been in freefall towards Mars for six days when they detected the sensor field of the Basestar Orion. After visually locating the source of the field they began following its approach. Because of the speed and trajectory of the Orion, they saw no need to alter their course. They knew that it was coming to them, and the speed of its approach left next to no doubt that the intention of the basestar was to intercept and engage. After another four hours, they noted that the basestar was decelerating. An hour after detecting this they noted that it was turning. Its course change and decreasing momentum were clear indicators that the basestar was settling into a trajectory and speed that was near to identical to their own. It took another three hours for the basestar to fix its position directly ahead of the UFP Armada and assume an edge on posture towards them. At this moment, the distance between them was too inconvenient for battle. 

“What’s it doing?” Eckhart questioned General Gruenberg with a look of confusion.

Eckhart had been a fixed resident aboard the UFP Armada Command and Control Spacefighter from the moment it lifted off from planet Earth six days earlier. Four crewmen under the command of Major Lee Everett were positioned behind the control consoles at the front end of the spacefighter cockpit. General Gruenberg, the commander of the armada, was seated behind the four and to the left of the Major Everett. Seated behind them were Eckhart and Wilkinson. Kaplan and Carr were seated in the next pair of acceleration chairs back.

“It’s taken a position between Mars and us,” Gruenberg reported as he studied the large monitor at the front of the cockpit. “And it has assumed a defensive posture.”

“So, catch it. Destroy it.” Eckhart commanded with an inflection that suggested he was speaking the obvious.

Eckhart’s outburst was motivated by the fact that the UFP Armada was freefalling through space. The thrusters of the massive space force went quiet five hours after its launch from Earth and had not reignited since. Eckhart had been aware from the beginning that Gruenberg was tracking the approach of the starcorp basestar. He understood the logic of maintaining their course and speed towards Mars and allowing the basestar to come to them. What he did not understand at this moment was their continued inaction now that the basestar was in their path.

“We are catching it,” Gruenberg reported as he continued to study the monitor. “It will cross into our sensor fields in exactly ninety-two minutes. It’ll be in the lethal range of our primary weapon twenty-six minutes after that.” 

The lethal range was a variable distance in space warfare. There was no limit to how far a projectile could be discharged. But there was a limit to how far it could travel and give the shooter reason to believe that it had a chance of reaching the target without being destroyed. This distance was dependent upon several factors: the speed and trajectory of the shooter, the speed, and trajectory of the target, the number of projectiles launched and most importantly the defensive capabilities of the target. Because of these variables, along with the vast distances and the astronomical speeds, space battles were effectively games of high-tech dodgeball between supercomputers.

At this moment, the Orion Basestar was beyond the sensor fields of the UFP Armada and it was trying its best to conceal itself with its narrow silhouette. The armada of spacefighters barely had the means to see it visually, and this was only because they knew where to look. Targeting it was also an extremely difficult task while it was outside of their sensor field. But Gruenberg had no doubt that this problem would no longer exist in one-hundred and eighteen minutes. The basestar needed only to hold its speed and trajectory.

Gruenberg’s plan was to initiate a fusillade when the basestar was inside the lethal five-second launch to impact range. He was confident that the basestar's defenses could not fend off several thousand projectiles traveling at very high speeds across a five-second-wide span. With this scenario in mind, Gruenberg began positioning the 1st Wing of his spacefighter armada into a relatively compact firing box along the leading edge of his command. On his order, this was being done as inconspicuously as possible. Gruenberg did not want to spook the basestar into running.

Spacefighters were armored spaceplanes built around a primary weapon system. The length of spacefighters ranged between eighty to one-hundred and fifty yards. They commonly had three levels and they never had less than two. The front quarter of the spacefighter was where the personnel housing and the cockpit were located. The power plant, primary engines and the magazine for the primary weapon were situated in the rear three-quarters of the spacefighter. The primary weapon, a railgun, was situated at the bottom level along the length of the front half of the spacefighter. The railgun was capable of discharging one-hundred slugs per minute. Most spacefighters had a single railgun. The others had two.

The external configuration of most spacefighters had a resemblance to a blade of a doubled edge dagger. The front one-fourth of the spacefighter was sharply tapered and rounded at the tip. The back three quarters gently widened out until its width was twice that of the front quarter. The thickness increased from the outside in. There were no windows to be seen anywhere along its exterior. The port for the railgun was hidden behind a shield door. There was no lift producing wings. Flight was produced by the primary repulsor engines at the rear. The secondary repulsor engines at the top, bottom, and sides of the spaceplane were also used to steer and orient the spaceplane.

The crew area was an interior fuselage that ran down the center in the front quarter of the spacefighter. The crew cabin was a large compartment situated at the front and on the top level of the spacefighter. It accommodated seating for twelve. The compartment below the cockpit was generally used as an auxiliary and storage area. Behind the cockpit and the auxiliary compartments were the sleeping quarters. These were accessible from the rear of the auxiliary compartment. The sleeping quarters were small, twelve-foot-long, cubicles. They were wider at the back than they were at the entrance. The cubicles were situated in a semicircle around the top half of the fuselage and stacked to form three successive levels along the length of the spaceplane. The floor of the cubicle was situated along the side that put the front end of the spacefighter below. Routinely during long space flights, the spacefighter would maintain a flat spin as it freefell through space. This had the effect of simulating gravity within it. The entire armada discontinued this effect eight-hours after detecting the sensor field of the Basestar Orion. 

The sensor field was a technology that was construed out of the research into the science of quantum entanglement. Its use was far superior to the radar technology it replaced a century earlier. Because of the vast distances that spaceships needed to peer into, and the great speeds that items in it tended to move at a device that provided instantaneous reports on its surroundings was superior, by far. It also had the added advantage of being able to note anything within the field. An object as small as a penny could be detected by its displacement of field energy. There was no deflecting or hiding from the sensor field.

The sensor field was seldom as large as could be produced by the power plant of the spaceship. The amount of energy needed to project them grew exponentially comparable to the growth of the field. Because of this potential strain on the power supply spaceships extended their sensor fields out as far as they felt was needed or could be afforded. Civilian spaceships seldom devoted more than five percent of its power output to the sensor field. It was rare for them to need a field beyond what five percent could produce. Military spaceships routinely devoted thirty percent of their power output to the sensor field while in freefall and no less than half that when the engines were in use. This percentage was determined by the amount of power they could afford to allocate to the fields production.

The act of projecting the field was likened to blowing up a balloon. The field extended out from its generator at the speed of light. The amount space perceptible by the spaceship’s computer grew as it expanded. All that was detected within the sphere of the sensor field registered inside the spaceship's computer instantaneously.

The sensor field that that enveloped the UFP Armada was so large that the flight crews of the spacefighters could not immediately discern the location of its origin. The field washed over the entire armada within an instant. It took them more than a minute to correlate the data from all the spacefighters and use it to compute the curvature of the sensor sphere. From this information, they calculated the direction and distance of the spacecraft that was generating it. Another minute of visual scanning of the area produced their first image of the basestar. Another five minutes of examining the spacecraft told them that it was moving towards them from their four o’clock position, and that it was moving at a speed that was a third faster than their own.

Gruenberg was shocked by the size of the sensor field being produced by the starcorp basestar. He suspected that a military craft that was as big as a starship would likely produce an abnormally large sensor field. What took him by surprise here was the fact that this sensor field was a third larger than his most generous estimation. In Gruenberg's report to Eckhart, he explained that if the diameter of a marble represented their sensor field then their spaceplane would be one-one-thousandth of the size of the tip of a needle and situated at its center. Keeping with that scale, he explained that a comparable representation of the diameter of the basestar’s sensor field would be a beach ball.

“What does that mean?” Eckhart challenged with an inflection of concern.

“Maybe nothing,” Gruenberg responded with a shake of his head. “Maybe everything.”

Eckhart was not satisfied with this answer. The fact that Gruenberg brought it up as a point of interest was enough to make him more than a little curious.

"What's he talking about," Eckhart questioned Wilkinson behind a quick turn of his head in his direction.

"The starcorp warship has a visual advantage," Wilkinson began to explain in at hushed volume. "If it chooses to it can hide out there and orchestrate the battle while we search around in the dark looking for it."

"So, is that it?" Eckhart questioned back with a look of alarm. "Are we beaten?"

"No," Wilkinson answered without hesitation. "It just means we will have to find it first, that’s all. "

"What about their spacefighters?" Carr questioned in a challenging tone. "Won't this give them an advantage?"

Eckhart did not know the significance of Carr's question, but the fact that he thought to ask it caused him to be very interested in the answer. He looked to Carr, and then back to Wilkinson, and waited for his reply.

"If the warship has fighter support then it should be able to direct their engagements from a safe location—Initially."

"Initially? What does this mean?" Eckhart questioned with a confused expression.

"It means," Gruenberg started with a quick interjection, "that we're going to have to destroy its fighter screen first. But I don’t anticipate that to be a problem."

Eckhart was not completely convinced by Gruenberg's confident retort. After a quick study of his General, Eckhart looked to Wilkinson for confirmation that his offhanded dismissal of the situation had justification.

"It's just a battle tactic," Wilkinson assured with an affirmative nod of his head. "There's no chance of them having the numbers to fight us."

Eckhart looked to Carr for a sign that he agreed with this analysis. What he got was a shrug of indecision. Confused by this, Eckhart gave it a moment of thought and then turned to Kaplan, as an afterthought.

“What do you think?”

Up until this moment, Kaplan was not thinking about venturing an opinion on this subject. It did not matter to him one way or the other what the basestar could do. He had no interest in this conflict or its outcome. Kaplan was fully aware of how needless this entire adventure was. Eckhart’s question to him was the only thing that gave him reason to give the subject an assessment. After a second of thought, he commenced to give his answer with a nonchalant delivery.

“We should have a sizeable advantage in numbers.”

Eckhart derived some assurance from this declaration from his Minister of Public Works. He knew Kaplan to be a very smart man on matters of industry and commerce. He often had his suspicion that Wilkinson’s words were more bravado than brilliance. And he knew that silence from Carr was a defense mechanism. If he could not be brilliant, then he chose to be noncommittal. Carr feared to be wrong to an excess. But Kaplan was a thinker that Eckhart could count on to give his best assessment of any situation, and when his words were definitive he was invariably right.

“So, it won’t hurt us?” Eckhart questioned Gruenberg after a moment of reflection.

“It may slow us down, but it changes nothing.”

Gruenberg had little doubt that the basestar had a contingent of spacefighters to protect it. Despite this expectation, he thought it unlikely that it was equipped to accommodate any more than fifteen-hundred spacefighters. And he suspected that the actual number was far fewer than that. He took comfort from the knowledge that the basestar would have too few spacefighters to repel his command, but he found concern in the fact that it had a large advantage in situational awareness. He knew that it could stand off and orchestra its fighter force long before his own sensor field enveloped the space between them and the basestar. This was nowhere close to being an insurmountable complication by Gruenberg’s calculation. But it did give him reason to wonder if there were going to be more surprises.

Unlike Gruenberg, Eckhart gave no thought to tactics. He only wanted to know if they had the forces to do the job. With the support of Kaplan’s words, Eckhart was reassured that this was the case. He suspected that his General was inclined to be over confident, but Kaplan, by his estimation, was pragmatic and objective.

Kaplan’s competence in the affairs of industry, commerce and construction were not the reason behind his presence there. It was his widespread knowledge in the fields of engineering and science that earned him a seat inside this spacefighter. Eckhart insisted on the presence of his three most prized Ministers as advisors to him.

“I prefer to not get all my information from an underling that I have no history with. I have no doubt that the crew will tell me what Gruenberg wants me to hear. I want someone there who will give me the unvarnished truth.”

Kaplan gave this as his explanation for his decision to conscripting his three Ministers into this adventure. Wilkinson was a willing and eager participant. Kaplan and Carr were much less so. They put up strong objections to their presence within this expedition, but Eckhart entertained no resistance to what he wanted.

_~~~~~line break~~~~~_

Nearly ten hours before situating his basestar ahead of the UFP Armada, Joshua transmitted a message to Eric Gourmand. In it, he reported the UFP Armada’s ETA to Mars. At the end of the message, he requested instructions on how to proceed.

“Admiral Sloan be advised, at the UFP Armada's present speed it will be upon us before we can make our escape. We need time. As much as you can give us. I am ordering you to engage the UFP Armada. Check their advance. We need forty hours. We’re counting on you. Good luck.”

This return message from Gourmand had come in an hour before the Orion began decelerating. One minute after it fixed its position ahead of the UFP Armada the Orion turned its primary thrusters into the direction of its fall and ignited them. The burn lasted for fifteen seconds. After this, the rate of fall between the UFP Armada and the Basestar Orion was no longer identical. The range between them was decreasing at a steady rate. After shutting down the burn, the massive basestar rotated its frame so that its aspect to the UFP Armada was edge on. This made it harder to see.

Joshua gave the order to deploy the first wing of mows the instant the basestar became fixed into its gradually deteriorating lead in front of the UFP Armada. Within three minutes of that command, the three docking bay doors on the underside of the basestar slid open and one-hundred mows began floating out through them, one after the other. By comparison to the UFP spacefighters the mows were gargantuan. Each mow was as large as twenty spacefighters clustered together. The mows had an inoffensive look about them as they drifted out into the space behind the basestar. From a distance, they looked like pumpkin seeds, minus the wrinkles and distortions on its surface. Up close it was plain to see that the circumference of the broad area had an egg shape. The back end was wider and more rounded than the front. Edge on, they took on the appearance of flying saucers. The broad sides of the mows had pronounced bulges, and the edge sides were rounded off. The surfaces of the mows were smooth and unblemished by external attachments. Thirteen small thruster holes were situated in evenly spaced locations about the craft. Two of these openings were positioned side by side beneath the wide end.

As the mows moved away from the basestar, they began to pair up. As they did this, they positioned themselves into a ten across, and five down, rectangular formation, two mows to a section. As soon as this formation was assembled, they extended this rectangle formation out into a front that was nearly as wide as the armada coming towards them. After this, the individual mows separated out into their respective box within this square. In ten minutes’ time, the mows were fully deployed. Each mow was so distant from the other that they could not be seen visually without the aid of a telescopic lens. In their rear, the Basestar Orion was a diminishing speck. The mows were falling towards the UFP Armada at a speed that was four times greater than their basestar.

_~~~~~line break~~~~~_

Less than five minutes had passed in Gruenberg’s one-hundred and eighteen-minute wait when he began to get reports of movement around the basestar. Nearly all the reports were coming from UFP spacefighters at the head of the Armada. Their enhanced visual scans of the basestar appeared to be showing things moving about in the area where they calculated the basestar should be. Gruenberg noted these reports, but he showed no concern for them. Varied interpretations of these sightings began coming in at a growing frequency over the next three minutes. At the end of this time, Eckhart asked for an explanation.

“They’re coming,” Gruenberg reported without expression.

“Who’s coming?” Eckhart demanded back.

“The fighters,” Gruenberg explained without expression.

Gruenberg knew that this activity could only represent one thing, a force of spacefighters was being deployed. He saw no reason to be perturbed by this event. He expected it. In his mind, the number and the makeup of the fighters were equally irrelevant at that moment. He knew that the sensor fields of his armada would envelop them long before they came within lethal range. He expected to have a pristine image of the battle space when this happened. He needed only to wait for this to occur to see all. And he needed only to wait for the range between them to become advantageous to the weapons systems of his forces to destroy whatever was in front of them.

The UFP spacefighters were heavily dependent upon their Directed Energy Defense Systems. Particle beam guns were embedded into the structure of the spacefighter in a dozen different locations. A humorous moniker for this was the porcupine defense. Despite the comical name, the Directed Energy Defense System was an integral part of a battle tactic that was similar to the formation flying of daylight bombers during World War II. While moving as a compact group, the spacefighters were capable of overlapping fire. This was true of their defensive and offensive weapons systems. Maintaining this capability of mass fire was Plan A for all spacefighter forces. All other plans were motivated by a failure to succeed with Plan A.

The most common reason for this battle tactic failing was the weight of fire coming in. It was simple mathematics. A force comprised of superior numbers, or produced a superior weight of fire, or effected a superior number of hits invariably won the battle. To survive this onslaught, the opposing formation would have to break and run. Spacefighters that were engaged in full powered evasive maneuvers were harder to hit, but this also meant that they had abandoned the tactic of mass fire and lengthened the time it took to accurately aim their weapons.

The primary offensive weapon of the spacefighter was the railgun. Warheads or slugs, as they were frequently called, were accelerated down a rail along the length of the lower half of the spacefighter and rifled out of an opening in the nose cone. Aiming the weapon was a matter of directing the spacefighter towards the target and holding it there for the duration of the volley. The design of the spacefighter and the defensive systems in it were engineered around this reality. The spacefighter had a thin silhouette when looking head-on at its target. The primary purpose of the Directed Energy Defense System was to protect the spacefighter while it was in this shooting posture. The Achilles heel of this posture was its rigid configuration. The spacefighter was, essentially, a stationary target.

When in a fully evasive mode the weapons platforms of the UFP spacefighter, both offensive and defensive, were all but useless. Extreme evasive maneuvers involved redirecting the primary thrusters. This could not be done without redirecting the primary weapon in the same motion. Extreme evasive maneuvers also had the effect of creating too much work for the targeting computer. This rendered the Directed Energy Defense Systems useless. These two realities made breaking formation a final option. Once a spacefighter commenced evasive maneuvers it was almost always committed to them until it was out of lethal range of its opponent’s weapon. These were all tactics used and learned in the Third World War.

_~~~~~line break~~~~~_

In the twenty-second century, autonomous and remotely operated weapon systems are things of the past. Many things brought about the return of the fighter pilot, first among these was the fact that cyberspace was its own battlefront. The advent of sensor technology gave hackers an unfettered view of transmissions and electronic data. A zero-gravity field is the only defense against this kind of intrusion, sensor technology cannot penetrate its casing. This also mean that remote communication with the computer is not possible. After launch, autonomous computers must operate without any human instruction, but AI’s have the problem of being predictable. The greatest nemesis to an AI is another AI with the task of analyzing its decisions. New technologies also played a role. Sensor fields extended the battle space out across vast distances. The ability to make decisions in milliseconds was not a requirement for operating a spacefighter. Intuitive thinking and the ability to produce imaginative solutions became more important than computational power. Computer interfaces that accentuated the capabilities of the pilot was the motivation behind all cockpit design. And because a biological brain could not be remotely hacked and reprogramed, the inviolability of the human mind became the only secure operating system in this age of super high-tech cyberwarfare.

The fighter pilot operating the mow that was situated near the bottom right corner of the box one level down and one row across from the left was Starcorp RG01 Space Force Lieutenant Sawyer Beck. As a member of the first of three wings within the Basestar Orion, he was tasked with being a part of the first wave to engage the UFP Armada. He was selected to be a part of this wing because of his game scores and his character. During the abbreviated basic training that was given to him and the other newcomers to the force, he earned a reputation among most of his superiors for emotional stability. He was not alone in this achievement, but among that group he held the highest game score.

Being in the first wave of spacefighters was not a goal of Sawyer's. His position in the First Wing was the result of his penchant for doing the best that he could. It was Sawyer’s hope that this conflict with the UFP would never come to a fight. When he climbed into his mow for this engagement he did so with a feeling of dread. As he and his wing moved closer to the moment of combat this feeling crept ever closer to a sensation of terror.

Sawyer was the only one out of his four friends within the RG01 Space Force to be selected for the 1st Wing. Oscar was placed in the 3rd Wing, CC and Martin were placed in the 2nd Wing. These positionings were not reflections of their game scores or skill levels, for the most part. There were two others that had game score highs that were greater than Sawyer’s, but their characters and temperaments relegated them to the 2nd and 3rd wings. Martin’s game score high was at the lower end of this gamer fighter force, but he was given high marks for temperament and maturity. Oscar and CC had game score highs that were greater than most in the 1st wing, but they were relegated to the 3rd and 2nd wings for immaturity and a suspicion of insufficient aggression, respectively. Commander Ronald Noonan, the officer-in-charge of Orion’s space fighters attempted to load the 1st wing with spacefighter pilots he believed to have the strongest combination of skill, aggressiveness, and character. The distribution of the 2nd and 3rd wings were organized to be as even as possible. 

“Okay, people, let’s get ready.”

Commander Allen Doherty’s voice reverberated out of Sawyer’s headphones.

Doherty was not a gamer volunteer. He was a Security Forces volunteer with a high-ranking score in the cockpit simulator relative to the other non-gamers. His skill as a mow pilot was in no way comparable to the gamer volunteers. His position as wing commander was owed to his age and his many years of experience as a Starcorp Security Force Officer. All three wings of Orion’s fighter force were under the command of a security force officer volunteer with similar credentials. This arrangement was insisted upon by Commander Noonan and agreed to, with some reluctance, by Joshua.

“We are the wall,” Doherty continued with a flare of defiance. “Nothing gets through.”

Doherty’s call to the ready was for effect. All of them were at the ready from the moment they left the basestar and Doherty knew this. As the wing commander, he felt obliged to make some remark now that all the mows were fixed into their places. He also knew that he would have little time to be rousing once the battle commenced. And he anticipated the engagement was a few minutes away.

The mows made no effort to speed up or slow down their convergence with the UFP Armada. They fell through space without the aid of their thrusters. In actuality, the Orion, the mows and the UFP Armada were falling in the same direction. The basestar was falling at a slower speed than the UFP Armada and the mows were falling far slower than both. The mows maintained an edge on attitude towards the Armada as they fell. From the front, they looked like the heads of spears flying through space.

The interior of the mow consisted of a cockpit and a narrow tubular corridor to reach it from the exterior. The cockpit was identical to the interior of the Physalia virtual world gaming pod. And like the Physalia gaming pod it had no manipulator arm. The occupants floated in a zero-gravity field generated by the pod. The sphere did not spin or rotate. The interior wall of the pod was one large monitor that displayed a digital representation of all that there was about the spacecraft. A transparent visor attached to a helmet provided data that needed to omnipresent. The data stayed fixed inside the visor along the top, bottom, and sides of the screen. Telemetry of the mow’s surroundings extended far beyond what could be seen with the naked eye or with the aid of a telescope. The bulk of this data was fed to it by the Basestar Orion. Image sensors in the sphere and LED markers on the suits of the pilots enabled the onboard computers of the mows to capture the pilot’s movements. All the actions of the mows were designed to be controlled by by motion capture. In the event that the cockpit stopped functioning a secondary, hands-on, control system was built into the mow.

_~~~~~line break~~~~~_

“What’s that?”

Eckhart’s sudden inquiry was motivated by Gruenberg’s interest in some blips that began appearing in the forward display monitor. There was little happening on these displays that he understood or cared to. He depended on others to tell him when something of significance occurred. The fact that Gruenberg sat up to take notice of these sensor contacts was all the motivation that Eckhart needed to be curious about them.

“They’re fighters,” Gruenberg acknowledged as he continued to study the monitor.

Eckhart noted the growing look of astonishment on Gruenberg’s face. He paused to examine the monitor, but the data continued to mean nothing to him. He then turned to Gruenberg with a question that was prompted by his confusion.

“What’s it doing?”

“Nothing yet,” Gruenberg rifled back with a hint of annoyance.

Gruenberg’s surprise was due to the appearance of the fighters on his monitors so much sooner than he expected. This detection was the result of the mows entrance inside the sensor fields of the armada.

“What’s the count?” Gruenberg bellowed towards the subordinates seated in front of him.

The space force crewman at the far front on the left respond to the inquiry without hesitation.

“One-hundred, and they’re coming fast.”

Gruenberg showed no surprise by this report as he continued to follow the approach of the blips on the monitor.

“They’re big,” the crewman at the far front on the right reported. “They’re too big to be spaceplanes.”

Gruenberg continued to have no reaction to the words of others. Eckhart was confused by this silence every bit as much as he was by the data on the monitors.

“Why aren’t we attacking?” Eckhart challenged with a stern look towards Gruenberg.

The urgency in Eckhart’s question appeared to have no effect on Gruenberg. The General took a moment to study the monitors before responding to it with an air of indifference.

“We have time. Let them come closer.”

Gruenberg’s thoughts were busy pondering the intent of this formation. He believed it too small to be the whole of the force being arrayed against him. His eyes were on the lookout for the fighter forces he believed to be lurking just beyond the range of their sensor field. But this thinking became increasingly unsound as the one-hundred mows fell deeper into their spheres of detection. Three minutes later Gruenberg was convinced that they were too close to escape an engagement with his forces.

“Colonel Trujillo,” Gruenberg beckoned into his microphone. “Detach a group and destroy that formation.”


	33. Battle is Joined

The UFP spacefighters were grouped into three fighter wings numbering one thousand and twenty-eight, or less. Each wing was divided into two groups numbering five hundred or more, and each group was divided into five squadrons that numbered a minimum of one-hundred. Altogether they stretched backward into a wide and ragged formation so great that the whole of their number could not be seen visually.

At the front of this procession, a group of five-hundred spacefighters began to thrust forward. The armada that they were attached to appeared to be falling away as the squadron pushed ahead into the black of space. Within seconds of activating their boosters, they began spreading out. This went on until they had a broad front that matched the height and width of the force in front of them. Within thirty seconds, all that could be seen of the UFP squadron was the light coming from their boosters. Fifteen seconds later these went dark and the fighters commenced to free fall through space. Two minutes after that their targets were in the lethal range of their weapons.

Leading this group forward was Major McLaughlin. He was several seconds away from giving the order to fire when each of the one-hundred targets in front of him appeared to break apart, expand, and transform. A second behind this he noted a continuous spray of projectiles spewing out from them. The projectiles were flying out ahead of the mows in numerous directions across the space that separated the mows from them. McLaughlin’s first thought was that the fire was random, but he dismissed this when the computer attached to his spacefighter reported that seven projectiles were coming towards his vessel.

“Activate D-E-D” McLaughlin shouted. 

Two seconds after that command was given four of the projectiles coming towards his vessel disappeared from the screen. But the remainder continued unabated.

“Evade, evade,” McLaughlin commanded at a holler.

McLaughlin had been reluctant to give this command. He knew that any evasive action would create an overload of work for the targeting computer. But in this instance, he feared that the last three projectiles were too close and moving too fast for the Directed Energy Defense System to destroy them.

The pilot responded to McLaughlin’s command an instant after hearing it. The secondary thrusters at the top of the spacefighter fired at full blast an instant later. The burn lasted for two seconds. At the end of this time, the three projectiles passed through the area overhead where the spacefighter once was.

“Seven more,” the crewman behind the weapons console shouted.

McLaughlin noted that the targeting computer was slow to lock on to these distant projectiles. He knew that the sudden evasive move of the spacefighter was the cause of this complication.

“Evade,” McLaughlin ordered with a shout.

The pilot reacted to this command by spinning the spacefighter about so that its rear was directed at its two o’clock position relative to its direction of fall and angled thirty degrees high. An instant behind this, he fired the main thrusters. Over the next three seconds, everything on the display shifted towards the upper right corner of the monitor. In the display, the projectiles could be seen streaking by and off the screen.

“Fire at will, fire at will,” McLaughlin yelled into his microphone so that all the spacefighters under his command could hear.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Sawyer's mow had been falling without input from him for the past two minutes. At the end of this time, he received an order to the ready station from Doherty. This order was transmitted to all one-hundred mow pilots. In response to this order, Sawyer took manual control of his mow by touching his right index finger to the display on the control sleeve attached to his left arm.

Sawyer had control panel sleeves on both arms. The sleeves were similar in appearance to white gloves that extended halfway up the forearm. Attached to the outer sides, along the forearm, were two-inch-long laser pointers. The control panels and the head gear were the only electronics affixed to Sawyer. The bulk of the mechanics that operated the mow existed behind the interior lining of the cockpit. All visuals were being produced by the monitor that enveloped him. The display provided animated graphics of the mow’s surroundings out to the end of its sensor field or the end of whatever sensor data that was being fed to it by an outside source. In this situation, all the sensor data being fed into Sawyer was coming from the Orion. His mow allocated no power to a sensor field.

“Target all UFP spacefighters in lethal range of your guns,” Doherty instructed after a minute of silence. “We have to make them break formation.”

After this, Sawyer heard nothing for another fifteen seconds. At the end of this time, the command he had been anticipating with dread blared through his headphone speakers.

“Engage, engage, engage!”

After hearing this Sawyer extended his arms out in front of him and then flagged his hands and forearms in a large U pattern. It was an action that was not unlike a musical conductor calling for the attention of his orchestra. The motions went down and away from his body and then up. The mow’s computer responded to this action by cracking the hull open along a hundred different interconnecting diagonal lines. Like the shell of an egg, the hull of mow broke apart into several dozen geometric shapes. As the flakes moved apart, the mow expanded out into a robot with a basic humanoid configuration.

In this new disposition, the mow took up four times more space. It had two arms, two legs and a torso. The head was, essentially, a platform for sensors, scanners, optics, communications and particle beam attachments. Much of the exoskeleton was a lattice of mechanical limbs. The upper torso was a reinforced chamber that housed the power plant and the cockpit. The area of the abdomen housed thrusters that faced forward and back. The lower legs housed repulsor engines at the foot. Each forearm was a housing for a repulsor engine. The thrusters were located where the hands would have been. Five railguns were affixed to the underside of the forearms in a circular configuration. Altogether they were capable of discharging one-thousand slugs per minute.

The deployment into this humanoid robot configuration took little more than one second. No sooner had it done this did the mow begin to spew out railgun slugs in rapid fire succession. Each projectile spurted out of the railgun with a flashlight. Within a fraction of a second, they disappeared into the black of space. The firing paused again and again as the mow adjusted its aim for a new target. These redirections lasted for a second or less. The mow needed only to adjust an arm to affect a new aim. Repeated short burns of the maneuvering thrusters were used to adjust and steady the mow.

All these actions and maneuvers by the mows were being orchestrated by the pilots inside them, and all of this was being done via motion capture. Repulsive electromagnetism between the Sawyer's suit and the lining of the cockpit kept the pilot suspended in the center of the sphere. Magnets within the suit at the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet made it possible for him to perform the movements that he wanted the mow to replicate.

The projectiles that were being rifled out of the railguns were football size nuclear warheads that were encased in a metal covering. The destructive effect of the slug was the kinetic energy it imparted upon impact. The warhead was a self-destruct feature. It detonated automatically after a set period of time. This was done to prevent errant projectiles from flying off and doing damage to something else, somewhere else, at some time in the near or distant future.

Sawyer had just finished firing off close to one-hundred slugs at seven separate targets when he brought the thumb and fingertips of his left hand together and gave his right hand a flip from the wrist. This was interpreted by the mow’s computer as a command to cycle out of combat mode into flight mode. These gestures were interchangeable with either hand. An instant behind this command Sawyer extended his arms out to either side with his fingers separated and swung his arms and hands out in front of him. The gesture resembled the act of pulling suds together in a bathtub. This had the effect of giving Sawyer a God’s eye view of his surroundings. A three-dimensional image appeared between his hands. The view around his mow was condensed down into a three-dimensional ball. The wall monitors went blank. His position inside this three-dimensional ball was represented by an avatar situated in the middle of the display. In this three-dimensional animation, he could see all the spaceships and projectiles moving about him. By adjusting the positions of his hands, he could rotate the image. Sawyer took less than two seconds to examine this display and then shut it down with a backhand flip at the three-dimensional sphere. The god’s eye view disappeared, and the wall monitors switched back on.

Sawyer cycled back to combat mode an instant later. This was affected by the same movements that cycled him out of it. An instant behind this he began to spin his torso to the left. He did this with a movement of his left hand and arm. The hand was flat, and the fingers were spread wide. The act was reminiscent of a movement used in water to spin to the left. This action operated his orientation thrusters. These were available in flight and combat modes. But full flight controls were only accessible in-flight mode. To stop his spin, Sawyer turned the flat of his hand in the opposite direction. At the end of this spin, he was head-on towards nine tiny moving blips. Each blip represented a UFP space fighter.

By extending an arm, pointing a finger and circling that area of the monitor, Sawyer highlighted it. He then turned the flat of his hand towards him and pulled in towards his face. This act magnified that patch of space on the display wall. To keep the spacefighters in the center of the display, the image moved up, down, left and right in response to Sawyer’s gaze. The dots that represented nine spacefighters were avatars within this magnified view. Alpha-numeric data in the display detailed their course, speed, and distance. To reduce the image, he needed only to move his hand back away from his face. When the image was magnified to his liking Sawyer turned the palm of his hand outwards. Half a second later the mow’s targeting computer locked on to all nine spacefighters. This was done automatically and was indicated by green circles that surrounded them. This told Sawyer that the targeting computer would compensate for speed and distance. In the time it took for the second half of that second to expire, Sawyer directed his laser pointers at the target he wanted to destroy and clinched his fists. As he did this, an animation simulated the spew of a rapid succession of warheads from his railguns. On several occasions, he unclenched his fists. This he did just long enough to redirect his fire at a different avatar. Three seconds later Sawyer unclenched his fists for the last time. All nine UFP spacefighters had been fired on.

The spacefighters that Sawyer was shooting at were too far away to be seen as anything other than a spec of light by the unaided eye. And they were moving too fast for a silhouette of the spacefighter to be contained within a telescopic lens. Because of this limitation, it was virtually impossible for Sawyer to see a target being hit by one or more of his projectiles. This failing had no effect on the sensor field. It registered everything. When a blip in the display blinked from white to red and back again, this was a report that it was struck by something. When one of Sawyer’s targets did this twice, he knew that he had hit it with two of his slugs. Had he witnessed it with his bare eyes he would have seen the first projectile punch into the back end of the first spacefighter he fired at and splatter sparks and debris out the other side. An instant behind this he would have seen the spacefighter spin violently around and the tail end breakaway into space. A second later he would have seen a second projectile rip into the front half of the spacefighter and shatter all but the nose cone into hundreds of pieces. Even while this was happening, he would have seen the path of half a dozen more projectiles as they streaked by it in the time span of a fraction of a second. While this was occurring, Sawyer returned his controls to full powered flight mode with a flip of his right hand at the wrist.

Much of the dance that Sawyer was performing while suspended in the artificially generated zero gravity of the cockpit was being duplicated by the mow. The reaction time was near to instantaneous. As he twisted and spun about in the cockpit, the monitors in the walls that surrounded him gave him the appearance of flying about in a digitized animation of space. With various gestures of his hands, arms, legs and feet he orchestrated the movements of the mow with a deftness that came from hundreds of hours of practice. In full powered flight, he needed only to flex one or both of his feet downward to produce propulsion from that extremity. By bending both of his knees at the same time he produced thrust from the rear mid torso thruster as well. By spreading his fingers wide, he produced thrust from that extremity. Extending both arms all the way out in front of him, with palms facing out, produced thrust from the front mid torso thrusters in addition to the ones at the end of the arms.

It took less than thirty seconds for Sawyer to fire off two hundred and eighty-nine slugs at twenty-three different targets. At the end of this time, he took notice that he was under fire. The mow was beeping alarms at him from seven different directions. A carpet of miniature speakers built into the lining of the cockpit made it possible to localize these alarms to the direction of the threat. This made it easier and quicker for the pilot to visually acquire incoming threats.

There were hundreds of slugs flying across the divide towards the mows. In Sawyer’s display, the projectiles that were moving in his direction were indicated with red circles around them. Often there was a cluster of these circles overlapped with each other. Each circle represented a single projectile. As the projectiles got nearer their circle became smaller. When they descended into red dots impact was a second away. With a flip of his left hand, Sawyer went to flight mode and evaded several projectiles. An instant behind that he condensed his display into a three-dimensional God’s eye view. It took him less than a second to decide his best course of action and he cycled back into combat mode to fire three UFP space fighters.

The mows had directed energy defense systems, but these were regarded as obligatory attachments. Evasive maneuvers were expected to be their primary defensive response. This was an action they were engineered to perform with far greater speed and agility than a spacefighter. Any one of the mow’s six primary thrusters was three times more powerful than what a spacefighter could produce. When performing evasive maneuvers, this power and speed made the destruction of an incoming projectile approaching at a high rate of speed, near to impossible. Just like the UFP spacefighters, the accuracy of the mow’s targeting computer decreased with sharp movements.

In Joshua’s mind evasion was deemed the best recourse in a battle. He understood that combat tactics would always be developed to overwhelm a directed energy defense system. Sawyer’s talent for evasive maneuvers made his directed energy defense system a seldom used weapon. This way of thinking was stressed to all the pilots, but it was the gamers that embraced it to the extreme. In their minds, the frequent use of the particle beam gun was a strong indicator of a weak player.

It took Sawyer two seconds to maneuver his mow into another patch of clear space. He then went into a freefall that lasted eight seconds. This was just long enough for him to engage five more UFP spacefighters. At the end of this time, he needed to move again to evade three new volleys of projectiles that were coming his way. This shoot and dodge dance went on for another two minutes. With movements reminiscent of an underwater ballet, he twirled and dived and corkscrewed and rolled and rocketed his way out of danger again and again. After a couple of minutes of shoot and evade, a lull paused the battle. Nearly fifteen seconds later the dance began again.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“What’s happening?” Eckhart called out with a look of confusion on his face.

Gruenberg ignored the inquiry. He was busy giving the developments of the battle in front of him his full attention. Its evolution was quick and surprising. It took less than four minutes for the initial engagement of five-hundred arrayed spacefighters to devolve into a scattered disarray of confusion. He did not know how to interpret what was happening. All but ninety of the spacefighters within the five-hundred in this engagement remained in place before the starcorp spacefighters. By his count, he still had an overwhelming advantage. He believed this to be true even though the starcorp spacefighters had not suffered a single loss.

“Colonel Trujillo,” Gruenberg barked into his microphone after triggering his transmitter. “Commit your second group to the fight!”

Eckhart paused to give Colonel Trujillo time to confirm receipt of the command. An instant after hearing this he rephrased his question to address a specific aspect of confusion.

“Why are our fighters retreating?”

In Eckhart’s mind, the events playing out on the monitors in front of him seemed to show the UFP spacefighters retreating from the battle. The bulk of the first five-hundred UFP spacefighters to engage with the starcorp spacefighters were scattered throughout the space in front of them and falling back along the sides of the procession.

“They’re not retreating,” Gruenberg explained in a solemn voice. “Evasive maneuvers have slowed their forward momentum. We’re falling past them.”

This was something that Eckhart could understand. The word momentum was often used when the Armada was first forming up for this trip. He knew that it took extended periods of time for multiple ships to match up their trajectory and their rate of fall through space. And he could see on the forward monitor that the spacefighters falling back around them were doing so across a scattering of trajectories.

“So, what do we do?” Eckhart questioned with a stern look towards Gruenberg.

“About them? Nothing,” Gruenberg answered without returning Eckhart’s gaze. “They’ll catch up.”

It took Eckhart a second to comprehend what Gruenberg was thinking. His continuous stare at the forward monitor told him all that he needed to know. The battle with the starcorp spacefighters was entering another phase. Five squadrons of UFP spacefighters were flooding into the battle space. Eckhart turned his attention to this event and commenced to watching it develop.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Colonel Trujillo led the second half of the UFP Space Force 1st Wing into the fray. Unlike the five-hundred before them, the first volley was theirs. They swarmed into the battle space with their railguns spitting out projectiles in bursts of ten or more. Almost immediately all fire from the starcorp mows came to a stop. In close to a minute’s time their rate of fall increased by a third. The mows were backing away from the fight.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Hold the line! Hold the line!”

Commander Allen Doherty’s voice resounded in Sawyer’s cockpit again and again. His repeated calls to hold the line and to press the fight continued in the face of an overwhelming enemy that kept getting closer. Despite these calls for more aggressive action the mow pilots continued to back away from the fight.

“We can’t win this! It’s too many!”

Sawyer noted this remark came from a mow pilot to his right and below.

“Silence!”

Doherty’s command roared into Sawyer’s cockpit an instant behind.

“He’s right, we can’t win this!”

Sawyer noted that this remark was coming from a different mow pilot that was to his left and down.

“Get off this channel!”

Once again, it was Commander Doherty screaming into his microphone. His repeated calls for others to stay off this channel did not come as a surprise to him. During their training, it was drilled into the gamers that Channel-1 was for the wing commander’s use only. All pilots under his command were prohibited from speaking across the entire command under any circumstance beneath an emergency. A system was set up to facilitate communication across the entire command. Multiple channels were delegated for specific purposes so that information and commands could be passed on without interference from multiple speakers.

For the gamers learning to use multiple communication channels was the hardest part of their training. Their years in the game pods had attuned them to shouting back and forth to each other across a single communication channel. It was because of this ingrained practice, and the stress of the moment, that numerous gamers kept forgetting their training and resorted to old habits. And this they did to the annoyance of Doherty.

“Stop talking on this channel!” 

Despite these repeated lapses in communication protocols Doherty was able to get his messages across. Much of what he said was simply words of encouragement. This was the primary reason why he was given the command. Without a veteran security force officer in-charge, it was believed that the gamers would break and run at the first hint that they were losing. With regards to this task, Doherty was completely successful. On several occasions, he discouraged the gamers from giving up on the fight. But this had no effect on the progression of the battle.

Every one of the one-hundred starcorp space force fighters in this engagement was on the defensive. Even Doherty was forced to back away. The rate of fire from the UFP spacefighters kept them on the defensive. They were too busy evading projectiles to launch their own with any degree of accuracy. More than a few of the one-hundred starcorp spacefighter pilots were contemplating turning about and fleeing the fight. But all had reason to stay a little longer. Doherty had promised them that help was on the way.

The delay in the arrival of this help had close to all the starcorp pilots wondering if it was coming at all. More than five minutes after the UFP sent in its second wave of spacefighters this confusion was clarified. Orion’s second squadron of mows raced into the battle from directions that most did not expect.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“What’s that?” Eckhart exclaimed with a startled expression.

“That’s the other shoe,” Gruenberg returned with a hint of sarcasm.

Gruenberg was expecting a second wave of fighters from the Orion. The problem was that he did not know when or from where they would be coming. The Orion was outside of his sensor fields. The only method he had for monitoring the Orion was by visual tracking. But this was complicated, near to the point of impossible, by the basestar's natural stealth when posed edge on towards them and by the clutter of spacefighters zigzagging across his field of view. This blindness made preparing for a second assault difficult but not a worry. Gruenberg believed that dividing his forces would make them vulnerable. He trusted that the size of his armada could fend off any attack from the Orion, even the one racing into his sensor fields from above with railguns spewing projectiles into his 1st Wing in rapid succession.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Engage! Engage!”

Doherty’s bellow was too late to have any importance to Sawyer. The sight of one-hundred more mows racing forward from the rear was all the encouragement he needed. Their attack from above caught the UFP spacefighters by surprise. The second wing of mows divided into four columns as they entered the battle space. Two of the columns steered in from left high and low of the battle space and the other two steered in from the right high and low. Because they were entering from the perimeter of the battle, the UFP forces were limited in their ability to overlap their fire. Despite this, the bulk of the fire that was directed at the 1st Wing of Orion’s Spacefighter Force was now being directed at the 2nd Wing that was charging into the fray. The formation of the UFP spacefighters began to swirl and disband in response to the well-aimed barrage from Orion’s 2nd Wing. Within the first minute of the attack, a dozen UFP avatars in Sawyer’s display blinked red. Most did that two or three times before disappearing from the monitor completely.

Sawyer reacted to the sight of this counterattack by thrusting against his fall and closing the distance between him and UFP force. It was an instinctive act. He knew that he had to lend his gun to the fight for the benefit of the others. He fired into the UFP Armada while dodging numerous salvos of railgun slugs. Two of his targets blinked red multiple times. His initiative was quickly followed by the entire 1st Wing of mows. In ten minutes’ time, the neatly formed 1st Wing formation of the UFP Armada was a scattered mess. All one-thousand spacefighters were widely scattered and falling outside of their assigned trajectories.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Colonel Kaczynski, engage with everything you’ve got,” Gruenberg roared into his microphone. “Engage now.”

It took little more than ten minutes for Gruenberg to discern that his first wing was so badly discombobulated that they were no longer capable of producing a concerted offensive action. His attack order to Colonel Kaczynski, the commanding officer of the 2nd Wing of the UFP Armada, was a desperate attempt to reverse this trend. Shortly after that order was given, the second wing of the UFP Armada, one-thousand spacefighters strong, began to push past the scattered discards of the formation that went before them. On the large display in front of Gruenberg, this was seen as a computer-generated animation. In appearance, it looked as if a dedicated stream of flying insects were racing through an expanding cloud of dazed and confused brethren.

Once the 2nd Wing of the UFP Armada was on the far side of this cloud it expanded and divided to engage all five fronts of the Orion fighter screen. Three minutes into this engagement these fronts merged into a single battle line across a large area of space. The 2nd Wing of the UFP Space Force situated itself across the entire height and width of it, seemingly like a mesh screen. Situated in front of them, the starcorp mows were nearly invisible by comparison. They were nothing but specs spread widely apart. The weight of fire from the UFP spacefighters coming towards the mows was the primary indicator of their presence. The size of this disadvantage had the mows racing backward to maintain the distance between them. Despite this onslaught, there were only rare indicators that one of the mows had been struck by a slug.

The weight of losses that the UFP spacefighters were experiencing was a severe contrast to the mows. Half a dozen or more of their number were blinking red every second. They fell away from the line like snowflakes falling out of the sky. But they had the numbers to endure this. Their line vacillated under the fire from the mows. Their maneuvering thrusters occasionally made minor pushes up or down, left or right, to sidestep a series of incoming projectiles. Their main thrusters were intermittently used to press the fight by pushing them forward. But the UFP spacefighters had yet to break away into full powered evasive maneuvers. This trend continued for another ten minutes, up until the moment that Joshua committed the last wing of his complement of spacefighters.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Here comes another group of fighters,” Wilkinson warned with a point towards the large monitor.

Gruenberg watched in silence as the third group of starcorp mows entered the battle space from beyond the sensor fields of his armada. All present noted that this group was smaller than the previous two.

“How many?” Gruenberg shouted out to the crew of his spacefighter.

“Fifty,” Major Everett reported off the tip of his tongue.

Gruenberg took in this information as though it was something to ponder on. All present was wondering what he was thinking and why he was not reacting to this event. They all watched the battle progress for another twelve minutes. During this time, four separate groups of mows assaulted the 2nd wing of the UFP Armada at four locations along its perimeter. By the end of this time, two-thirds of that wing was in disarray and falling behind. Only the center stayed in formation. But by this time, it was clear that the center was doomed to be chased out of its offensive posture.

“Do something,” Eckhart yelled at the commander of his armada.

Gruenberg was quick to give Eckhart a stern look before responding to his outburst in a lecturing voice.

“Calm yourself, Prime Minister. This battle is far from over.

Eckhart’s concern was not lessened by this response and he abruptly challenged it.

“You have another wing of fighters. Why aren’t they in the fight?”

Gruenberg was in no rush to answer this question. He devoted the next thirty seconds to watching the second wing’s center commence to break apart. At the end of this time, he turned his attention to the officer in charge of the spacefighter he was in.

“Major, reduce the forward momentum of the Armada by two-thirds. Bring all forces back into formation. Report back to me when this is completed.”

“What are you doing?” Eckhart questioned with a shocked expression.

Even as Eckhart was saying this Major Everett was barking out orders to the crew and to the armada to bring about Gruenberg’s directive.

“I’m reforming the armada for the next offensive,” Gruenberg explained with an inflection of annoyance.

“We don’t have to reform the Armada,” Eckhart roared back. “All you had to do was commit the 3rd Wing to the fight.”

“And what if they had another one-hundred, or two-hundred, of those things waiting out there,” Gruenberg challenged with a stern look towards Eckhart.

There was a second of silence as Eckhart hesitated to think about this. Gruenberg gave him no more time than this to respond.

“The mistake was in attacking with too little at the beginning,” Gruenberg instructed gruffly. “I underestimated this warship's fighter screen. One on one, their spacefighters are superior to ours. I can’t risk letting them scatter my entire command. Spread out and disorganized those things could take out my entire command piecemeal.”

Gruenberg paused to give this reasoning more thought. At the end of this, he annunciated the decision produced by the effort.

“I’m not going to let that happen. They have the technology, but we have the numbers. We will reform and attack with more weight, and smarter.”


	34. More Time

“Hi,” Sawyer greeted with a sigh of relief.

“Hi,” CC returned with a bewildered look.

For the next several seconds, an awkward silence existed between them. They had nothing prepared to say to the other beyond this greeting. CC was the first person that Sawyer wanted to see after the battle. The sight of him was equally important to her.

“Are you okay?” Sawyer inquired after taking notice of her dazed demeanor.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” CC reported with a lack of conviction.

CC took a second to recognize that she was displaying a look of distress and then confessed to the cause of it.

“It was scary.”

“Don’t go back out there,” Sawyer returned with a quick response.

“I’m not quitting,” CC retorted with a shake of her head.

“You don’t have to do this,” Sawyer pleaded back at her.

“I’m not quitting,” CC spoke back with an intonation of resolve.

The two of them settled on that statement as the last word on this subject. They took a moment to make this agreement with silent stares. At the end of this CC became distracted by someone in her space capsule. After taking a moment to note this person with a look and a wave, she turned back to Sawyer with a report.

“It’s Marvin, I’ll bring him on.”

Martin and CC were situated inside the same space capsule with forty-four other members of the 2nd Wing. Sawyer was situated in a space capsule occupied by members of the 1st Wing. The conversation between them was being teleconferenced through Orion’s communication system. Among the mow pilots space, capsule allocations were based on their pilot status and their assigned fighter wing. Active pilots, or pilots assigned to a mow and to a wing, were kept grouped according to these assignments. Reserve pilots were kept together, but their capsule groupings were random. All the mow pilots that were a part of the battle were sent back to their space capsules for food and rest. For reasons of safety, the habitat portion of the basestar was shut down for the duration of this engagement. Space capsules were the bomb shelters of a basestar.

Being in separate space capsules caused only one restriction on communications, conversing could not be done face to face. In all other respects, communication was enhanced. Space capsules were communication hubs. This was built into them. Every space capsule was a functional command and control center. They were all capable of operating the spaceship it was in. This was a mandated safety feature that was put in place to address a situation where the designated command and control space capsule was damaged or destroyed.

Sawyer initiated this conversation with CC through the communication system built into his acceleration pod. He had plans to speak with Oscar and Martin as well, but they were not the priority at this moment. He knew that they both had survived the battle. The Orion mainframe was perpetually updating a list of the dead, injured and missing in real time. This was the first thing he looked at when he got back aboard the basestar. When he saw that CC’s name was on the list of the returned, he was quick to make contact with her.

“Hi,” Marvin greeted in a somber voice.

“Hi, Marvin,” Sawyer greeted back in an equally solemn tone.

Sawyer was not at all surprised by Marvin’s sudden appearance on his monitor, side by side with CC. He was accustomed to conversing with multiple individuals in this manner. He would have initiated this party connection if he had not wanted to speak with CC alone.

“Are you okay?” Sawyer questioned after an awkward pause.

Sawyer’s question prompted a snicker out of Marvin that came ahead of a sarcastic reply.

“Oh yeah, I’m having a great day.”

CC and Sawyer briefly chuckled in reaction to this report.

“Yeah, that was intense,” CC declared behind her laugh.

The three of them laughed again. After a grin, Sawyer added his jest to the conversation.

“Live fire definitely adds an exciting new dimension to the game.”

“Yeah,” Marvin agreed with a laugh. “Too bad it wasn’t in the arcade game.”

Once again, the three of them broke into laughter. Shortly into this, a blinking icon appeared along the bottom of Sawyer’s monitor. The label for it read “O. Nehru.” After noting this Sawyer reported to the others that Oscar was calling in. He then placed his index finger on the icon and dragged it into the window that CC and Marvin were sharing. The instant he took his finger off the icon a live image of Oscar popped into the window.

“Hey guys,” Oscar jubilantly greeted. “Was that great or what?”

Sawyer, CC, and Marvin were surprised by Oscar's upbeat welcome. The three of them had to take a moment to register it. Sawyer was the first to respond.

"You're awfully happy for someone that has just been in a space battle."

"Are you kidding?" Oscar returned with a look of astonishment. "This is the best day of my life."

"I can't believe that you're thrilled about this," Marvin challenged. "We could have been killed out there."

"But we weren't" Oscar disputed.

"This time," CC interjected.

Oscar took a second to note the mood of his friends and then he responded to it with an inflection of encouragement.

"Come on, we can beat these guys. We've done it a hundred times in the game pods."

"This isn't a game," CC corrected. "Seventeen mows didn't come back. And only three of their pilots have been recovered so far.”

The mows that did not return to the Orion were damaged to the extent of being inoperable. In most cases, this meant that the cockpit had been breached. If the pilot was inside when this happened, then he or she were certain to be dead. If the cockpit remained intact but was only impaired then the pilot had a chance at survival, assuming he or she was still alive after the impact. In this situation, the pilot needed only to get into the jettison pod and await pickup.

The jettisoned pod was a rectangular container that was just large enough for one person to fit in. This was a pilot's only way out of a mow when it was space-borne. The jettisoned pod had a battery pack and a life support system that could sustain the life of an occupant for three-hundred hours, more or less. When jettisoned the pod would emit a beacon along with data on the disposition of itself and its occupant. This was an automatic function whenever a pilot abandoned the mow. The jettison pod would also begin to transmit whenever the data link and/or the power connection to the mow became severed. In this instance, it would also transmit data on the disposition of the mow and report on any readings of life within it. A non-functioning mow, with its jettison pod still intact and transmitting zero readings of life, was a strong indicator that the pilot was dead. On the outside possibility that someone had beaten these odds, there were a dozen Orion spaceplanes running down the mows that did not answer the recall to the basestar.

“You do know that we’ll probably have to go out there again?" Sawyer spoke with an inquisitive look towards Oscar.

"That'll be great," Oscar acknowledged with a smile and while bobbing his head in the affirmative.

"You are now officially crazy," Marvin proclaimed with a look of incredulity and a shake of his head.

Oscar found amusement in this declaration and displayed a wide grin in reaction to it.

"You can't really want to go back out there," CC spoke with a questioning inflection.

"Yes, I can," Oscar disputed decidedly. "This is a once in a lifetime event. Aren't you excited? This is going into the history books."

Sawyer could think of nothing to say in opposition to this. He understood Oscar’s enthusiasm even though he did not share it. Secretly, he envied him for his fearless approach to life, and he knew that one day he would be proud to say he was here. But at this moment, the fear that he might not live past this event dominated his thoughts.

"Did you see your scores?" Oscar questioned with an excited expression.

"This is not a game," CC lectured in a stern tone of voice.

"Come-on," Oscar retorted with an inflection of incredulity. "I know you saw your kill totals. Sawyer, how many did you get?"

Sawyer had some reluctance to answer this even though the answer was on the tip of his tongue. He noted his kill total a second after the fighting stopped. This was easy enough to see. The mow computer maintained a running total of targets hit, missed and the percentage in the bottom right corner of his visor. After a moment of debate within his thoughts, Sawyer responded Oscar’s inquiry with a word.

“Seven.”

“You’re kidding. Seven?” Oscar reacted loudly. “I had eleven kills and I wasn’t out there half as long as you.”

Sawyer knew that Oscar’s amazement was well deserved. Seven-kills was well below the norm for him, given the opposition and the time. CC’s and Marvin’s totals of two and four were well below their norms as well. He knew that his game was suffering under the weight of his fear, and he was more than a little embarrassed by this.

“Come on, guys,” Oscar enunciated in an inspiring timbre. “We can do better than this.”

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Two-hundred and sixty-seven,” the crewman seated at the front left of Gruenberg’s Command and Control Spacefighter reported.

“What’s that?” Eckhart questioned with a hint of concern in his voice.

Gruenberg did not look away from the monitor he was studying as he responded to Eckhart’s inquiry.

“That’s the number of spacefighters we lost. Most of their crews were lost with them.”

“That’s nothing,” Eckhart insisted in an emphatic tone. “We still have an overwhelming advantage.”

Eckhart paused to hear if there was any disagreement with his analysis. He was shortly convinced that there would be no response and began to speak again with an intonation of urgency in his delivery.

“What do we do now?”

"We reset our formations," Gruenberg advised with a curt delivery.

"How long will that take?" Elkhart questioned half a second later.

Gruenberg gave the inquiry close to no thought before answering.

"Two to three hours."

"Three hours," Eckhart echoed back loudly and with a shocked expression. "Can't we speed that up?"

"We're doing this as fast as we can," Gruenberg affirmed with continued disinterest for the conversation.

Eckhart took a short pause to fume about this. At the end of this time, he came back with a response that was nearly spoken under his breath.

"At this pace, all of the starcorps could be gone by the time we get there."

"That's the plan, anyway," Gruenberg reported with a flippant inflection.

"What does that mean?" Eckhart growled at Gruenberg with an angry scowl.

Gruenberg took notice of the anger in Eckhart and reacted to it by giving him his full attention as he spoke.

"They obviously don't have the numbers to destroy us. If they did, they would be attacking right now. So, their intention must be to delay us."

"So then, we have to move faster," Eckhart insisted in a strident tone.

"I doubt they'll be ready to launch within the next thirty hours. That armored starship wouldn't still be here if they could."

Eckhart was not reassured by Gruenberg’s assessment. It sounded too much like a guess. The thought of the starcorps escaping his grasp was too unbearable for him to consider. Also, Gruenberg's casual behavior was irritating him. He wanted action. He wanted something to be done now to prevent the plan of the starcorps from working. After several seconds of frantic thinking, Eckhart blurted out the result of this effort.

"So, we go around them. We set off in ten different directions and we go around. They can’t hold up the entire armada."

Gruenberg knew that going around the basestar meant going around its sensor field. The act of being in a perpetual turn around the field meant that this could only be done at a drastically reduced speed. By his calculation, circumnavigating the basestar and its spacefighters would not be possible any other way. The basestar could see everything within its sensor field and deploy its spacefighters in response to any force moving through it. In addition, he assessed that dividing up his armada would be dangerous. The last thing Gruenberg wanted to do was provide the spacefighters of this basestar smaller portions of his armada to engage.

"They won't have to," Gruenberg corrected Eckhart. "Going around that sensor field will take ten times longer than it will take to go through it."

Gruenberg paused to give weight to his words. During this time, Eckhart could think of nothing to say to challenge this analysis. At the end of Gruenberg’s pause, he enunciated his last words on the subject.

"This is what you hired me for, Prime Minister. This is what I do. This is what I know. The quickest way to Mars is through that starcorp warship. We regroup. We reconfigure into a tighter formation and we go in heavy. This will draw out everything it has. After we’ve exhausted its fighter screen, we'll destroy the warship. And then we move on to Mars."

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Did Gourmand respond?” Noonan questioned while climbing back into his acceleration pod.

Noonan had just returned from visually examining the disposition of his pilots when he asked this question.

“No, not yet,” Joshua reported back to Noonan with a hint of impatience.

Commander Ronald Noonan and Admiral Joshua Sloan were in the command and control space capsule of the Basestar Orion. The first engagement between the UFP Armada and the mows of the Basestar Orion ended thirty minutes earlier. Noonan took a moment to note that there would be nothing to discuss on the subject he just raised until after Gourmand’s return message. This decision prompted him to bring up a new subject that was bothering him.

"Why didn't you deploy the last thirty-four mows?"

Noonan’s question referred to the fifty mows that Joshua deployed instead of the full eighty-four he had remaining.

"I didn't want to tip my hand," Joshua returned with a shake of his head.

"Tip your hand?” Noonan questioned with a confused expression.

Joshua took notice that the commander of his mows was completely unaware of what had just happened. He turned to give Noonan a look as he gave his explanation.

"The commanding officer of that UFP Armada doesn't know how many mows I have. I think the round number may have made him cautious."

"You think he noticed the count," Noonan acknowledged.

"He didn't commit his third wing," Joshua retorted with a soft shake of his head.

Noonan had been curious about this, as well. It was only at this moment that he was able to produce a halfway acceptable rationale for the UFP Armada commander’s choice not to commit the remainder of his forces. Despite this reasoning, he still thought it was stupid of this UFP Armada commander not to commit the third wing and he was quick to explain why to Joshua.

“He still should have sent in his third wing. How much damage could we have done even if we did have another fifty or one-hundred mows?”

“We could have dispersed his entire command, for one thing,” Joshua lectured in a benign tone. “After that, we could have attacked them in segments, kept them from regrouping and decimated a quarter to one-third of their number before returning to rearm the mows. But that’s if we had another one-hundred mows.”

“But they don’t know that,” Noonan acknowledged with a knowing look.

“No, they don’t,” Joshua agreed, glumly. “But they will.”

Noonan needed no explanation for this. They were down to two-hundred and sixty-seven mows. If forced to commit his entire compliment of fighters, he knew that the UFP Armada commander would take note of this number.

“How are the gamers?” Joshua questioned with a look.

“They’re pretty shook up,” Noonan advised with a shrug. “We may lose some of them.”

“How many,” Joshua questioned back with an inflection of concern.

“Ten—forty, I won’t know until it’s time for them to get back into their mows,” Noonan answered with a flourish of his hands and a shake of his head.

Joshua took a moment to give this some thought. Two seconds into this Noonan spoke up with additional information.

“The veterans are ready to go.”

“Veteran” was the word Noonan used to differentiate the security force volunteers from the gamers. These pilots were the reserve. They were there to step up if, and when, the gamers began to balk. This was not the scenario that Joshua wanted. The UFP’s overwhelming advantage in numbers reinforced his belief that he needed the best pilots available for a second battle.

“If you have to,” Joshua acknowledged. “But all standby gamers take precedence,” he corrected with a point.

Noonan anticipated this decision and disagreed with it. In his mind, the gamers were mentally ill-equipped for this fight. But this was an argument that he had been through before with Joshua. He knew that it would be a waste of time to discuss it again. Because of this, he agreed to it with an “okay” and a nod of his head. He then moved on to a new point.

“At any rate, if the mows are going back out there then we’ll need to assign three more veterans as wing commanders.”

This report took Joshua by surprise. He had given no thought to the veterans that were assigned as wing commanders in the last engagement. The report that all three of them needed to be replaced brought the subject back into his thinking like a storm.

“We lost all three?”

“Yes,” Noonan reported with a nod.

Joshua reacted more than responded to this answer.

“No! The security force volunteers are a last resort. I want Gamers in as many of those mows as possible, no exceptions.”

“What about the wing commanders?” Noonan challenged with an expression of shock.

“Gamers only,” Joshua insisted back with a stern expression. “I need our best pilots in as many of those mows as possible.”

Noonan took this with a look of frustration. He shook his head and fumed over this order. He knew that Joshua’s mind was set and resigned himself to this.

“Okay Admiral,” Noonan returned with more than a hint of umbrage.

Noonan turned away from Joshua after this. Annoyed by this command, he gave no more talk on the subject or on anything over the next twenty minutes. It was shortly before the end of this time that Chairperson Gourmand’s return video message came in.

"Admiral Sloan, we need more time,” Chairperson Gourmand commenced with an emphatic delivery, “At a minimum, I need you to add an additional eight hours to their time to Mars. I am ordering you to remain on station and to take whatever action is necessary to acquire this time. Good luck."

As the message played out, Joshua took on an expression of dismay. The idea of disobeying this order, or resigning his commission, danced in and out of his thinking. But this was something that he could not do while he believed that the task was doable. He thought it all the more possible while he was in command. The thinking that had him distraught at this moment were the orders he feared to give to make that happen.

“Rest your pilots,” Joshua instructed Noonan after a moment of thought. “They’ll be going out, again, in a few hours.”

The rest period for the pilots lasted three hours and twenty-one minutes. Over the course of this time, Joshua watched as the UFP Armada reformed into squadrons, groups, and wings. After this, he watched as three wings of the Armada pooled into a single battle formation and began to thrust forward as one. Instead of spreading out across a wide front, these three-thousand spacefighters grouped into a tightly compacted, oblong shaped sphere. The elongated ends were aligned straight towards Mars.

The Basestar Orion was ten minutes into its summons for all pilots to get to their mows when Noonan got a report on the total number of gamers that opted out of this fight. His brief interview with a dozen pilots foretold of what was to come. Because of this, he was not surprised by this number. The trepidation in his expression was the result of his concern for how this number would affect Joshua's plans.

"Fifty-three," Noonan reported with an air of vindication.

"Pilots?" Joshua questioned back with a look of alarm.

"Yeah," Noonan answered with a smirk and a nod. "That leaves us with a deficit of seventeen gamer pilots."

Joshua took a moment to think about this with a stern look on his face. Noonan took advantage of this silence to advance his preference on how to manage this. He saw this as proof that the veteran pilots were better suited for this conflict.

“I want to send the veterans out this time.”

Joshua showed no sign that he heard the request let alone that he was entertaining it. His expression suggested that he was transfixed on the number of gamers that were opting out of the fight. He appeared to be contemplating for several seconds. At the end of this, he switched on the basestar’s public-address system and commenced to speak on the subject.

“To the crew of the Basestar Orion, this is Admiral Sloan speaking. I know that many of you did not want to be here, and that you had dreams for your futures that did not include risking your lives in a war in space. For this burden that I have encouraged so many of you to take on, I apologize. And I apologize for what I must ask of you now. Shortly, we are to be engaged in a battle that will determine the future of the starcorps. This is a fight that we cannot lose. Our families, our friends, everyone and everything that we hold dear will be affected by the outcome of this fight. This is a battle that I cannot run from, and it is a battle that I am obliged to ask you to undertake.”

Joshua took a brief pause after this to arrange the thoughts in his head into words to be spoken. He then took a strong inhale, fixed his face into a grimace of determination and began to speak again.

“It is a frightening thing to put the lives of others ahead of your own. But this is what I plan to do. I intend to win or to die trying. And I must ask you now to do the same. This is a battle that we must win! But to do so, we must do better. We must do more. We must break up this formation. We must turn it back. To do this, I need the best efforts of my best pilots. There is no hiding from this fight. If we die doing nothing, then we deserve what we get. And if we die doing less than our best then we deserve little better. I need you—I need your best game—Your families, your loved ones, your homes have need of your best game.”

Ten minutes after this message was transmitted, Noonan revised his report. All but six of the gamers returned to their mows.


	35. Gamer's Babble

“This is General Gruenberg speaking. The enemy has showed us its strength, and its weakness. Their technology is superior to ours, but their numbers are too few. We can defeat them. The only thing we need to win this fight is the fortitude to do it. If you commit to this engagement with everything you’ve got, we will win. You must hold your formation. You must move forward. This fighter screen that the enemy is deploying and the warship behind it cannot endure the weight of our numbers for long. I promise you, if you put their resolve to the test they will break. Think of your families. Think of your friends. Think of the billions of people on Earth that have died and suffered—that will die and suffer because of the spacers. Earth is counting on you. Hold your formation for them.”

Gruenberg transmitted this message to all within the armada. But it was primarily meant for the three-thousand space fighters that were thrusting away from him and toward the basestar that was hiding in the darkness in front of them. Gruenberg held back a group of five-hundred spacefighters from this engagement. They were positioned around the spacefighter that he and his VIP passengers were installed in. It was his belief that the weight of numbers of these three-thousand spacefighters would be sufficient to draw out every mow that the basestar had. And he had little doubt that the basestar’s fighter screen would be too small to deal with the bulk of his armada and the battle tactic they were employing for this engagement.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Nearly seven hours had passed from the beginning of the first engagement. From the start to the end of that action nearly two hours transpired. This gave Sawyer less than five hours to rest up for this new assault that was coming towards them. As it was in the first fight, his person was in distress. The experience of the first fight did little to dampen his anxiety and the newly added pressure of command did much to enhance it.

Shortly before the alert that sent all fighter pilots to their mows, Sawyer was promoted to the rank of Commander. In addition to this, he was given command of the formation that was going out to meet the fast approaching UFP Spacefighters. This appointment was all the more daunting in his mind because of the size of the task before them. Unlike the previous engagement, Orion's entire complement of mows, two-hundred and sixty-seven spacefighters, were sent forward to do battle. This was prompted by the size of the force coming towards them and the formation that they had chosen.

Sawyer had no idea why he was chosen to lead the entire formation or why none of the veteran pilots were not given this task. The appointment was given to him at the last moment and accepting the commission was easier than refusing it. Entertaining thoughts of turning down this command was nearly as painful as it would have been to vocalize it. He was too ashamed of this thinking to confess it to another. When offered the commission, he gave a nod and a yes sir and then set off for his mow and his first command.

When it came to doing the job of guiding this force into battle Sawyer believed himself to be as competent as any among the gamers. From his experience in the video games, there was little involved beyond dictating when the battle was to commence, where their efforts were to be focused and when to disengage with the enemy. His greatest fear was that his efforts would end in disaster. This too was something that he learned from the games. He knew that it was possible to lose this fight. The force they were facing was as great as any that he had seen in the games and greater than most. A bad end was an event that he did not want to be personally responsible for.

"Commander Beck, rally your forces. Talk to them. Ready them for battle."

The sound of Commander Noonan's voice blared through speakers in Sawyer's head gear. He could discern from its tenor that his intention was admonishment and not encouragement. Sawyer had said nothing since he gave the command for all to thrust forward five minutes earlier. He could think of nothing more to say after that. He knew that Noonan wanted him to motivate the other pilots to do their bests. But at this moment, he was struggling with the task of motivating himself for the battle to come.

In front of Sawyer was a force of three thousand UFP spacefighters grouped into a tight formation. The width and height of this formation produced a front that was one-twentieth the size of their previous formation. The depth of this formation was one-hundred times greater. It was a fortress of fighters. The purpose of this formation was to mass their fire as much as they could. For Sawyer and the other gamers this was plain to see. They had experienced it on many occasions within the video games. Sawyer had no doubt that all knew what to expect and what they had to do to prevail.

“Commander Beck,” Commander Noonan roared into Sawyer’s ears. “You must attack. You must disperse the enemy formation.”

These words were for Sawyer’s hearing alone. The command capsule aboard the Orion invariably limited their communications to the various commanders in the field. Their god’s eye view from a remote location provided them with the ideal location from which they could orchestrate the course of the battle. But it was the task of the commanders in the field to lead the forces into the fray. Sawyer surmised from this communication that it was time for him to do just that.

“Okay everyone,” Sawyer called out after he initiated his com-link. “You know what we have to do here. This formation is weakest at the front. “I’ll take the first wing in from high at the center. Cheung, you bring your wing in from the left low and Galvani, you attack from the right low. Concentrate fire on the front and center of this formation. Push in for kills. We have to scatter them. We have to get inside and break them up. If we don’t, then we’re just wasting our time here.”

Sawyer paused to give time for the last part of his message to resonate within the thinking of his second and third wing commanders. At the end of this time, he gave the order to attack. Each wing, a total of two-hundred and sixty-seven mows, charged in on the UFP formation from three separate directions. Each wing marked out its sector on a computer three-dimensional grid of the battlespace. Resembling three swarms of flying insects they swarmed towards the centermost point of the front end of the enemy formation.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Two-hundred and sixty-seven,” Major Everett read off his personal monitor. “I think that’s all they have, General.”

“I’m sure of it,” Gruenberg concurred with a knowing look. “We’ve got them.”

The large monitor at the front of the capsule displayed a computer-generated animation of the battle that was formulating before them. This god’s eye view showed three small swarms of starcorp spacefighters angling towards the front and center of the UFP Armada. A dozen smaller screens along the perimeter displayed optical images of the surrounding space. All within the capsule studied the large monitor. The two forces displayed there looked to be colliding off a half inch thick invisible wall. The starcorp spacefighters blended into one large mass and roiled about on their side of this wall. The front end of the UFP Armada was visibly blunted by this wall, but the formation held. Both sides continued to fall forward with little decline in their speed for the encounter. The only portion of this battle that could be seen optically were the slugs at the moment of their self-destruction. They intermittently lit up and died out, appearing like thousands of pinpoints of twinkling lights. 

“It’s working,” Wilkinson asserted with an inflection of astonishment.

The others in the capsule offered no challenge to this in either word or gesture. All eyes remained focused on the progressing battle. At the start of the engagement, starcorp mows looked to be winking off the monitor approximately every sixty seconds. Less than five minutes into the fray that rate increased to three every sixty seconds. The UFP spacefighters looked to be faring far worse in numbers. By this time, a minimum of five of their number was winking off the screen every fifteen seconds. Despite this the formation held and the armada looked none the worse for these losses.

“They’re beaten,” Gruenberg declared with a hint of finality.

A faint expression of delight appeared on Eckhart’s face in reaction to this report. Daring not to look away from the monitor, his eyes greedily followed the progression of the battle. He did not want to miss a second of this action. All the others within the capsule followed his lead and watched in silence for another four minutes.

“Is that it?” Eckhart blurted out in reaction to what he was seeing on the monitor. “Did we beat them?”

Gruenberg had no answer for this query. His attention held onto the large monitor with even greater intensity.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Sawyer led a less than vigorous charge on the front end of the UFP Armada formation. When his mow came within lethal range of the armada, he used his thrusters to halt his advance. The sight of so many UFP spacefighters produced a sensation of hopelessness in him. He suspected that thirty or more UFP spacefighters could be targeting him when he got close enough to the perimeter of their formation. And this they did at nearly the same instant he and his command began firing on them. The difference between the two barrages was that the slugs from the starcorps came out like a drizzle, and the UFP's barrage came out like a storm. Instinctively, Sawyer maintained as much distance as he felt he needed to give him a reasonable chance of evading the shower of projectiles. The other mows did the same without instruction from him.

Sawyer said nothing for the two minutes that followed his order to attack. He was too preoccupied with dodging the rain of slugs coming towards him while trying to target the vessels that propelled them. The three-dimensional display inside his capsule was filled with targets and projectiles. The assault on his mow was ten times worse than it had been in the previous battle, and the weight of this had him filled with terror. This was true to the point that he gave little notice to other members of his command that moved about along the edges of his display.

“Too many! It’s too many!”

Sawyer noted this report from one of his pilots with a look of surprise. His alarm was engendered by the fact that the pilot was breaking protocol by transmitting to the entire command. This was significant to him because it was his job to hold the others to the rules of engagement. Despite this, he said nothing in response to this report. He contented himself with the hope that the pilot would say no more and continued with the business of trying to stay alive.

The avatar of the pilot that spoke those words was not immediately visible to Sawyer. He knew from the direction of the sound that the pilot was at his eight o’clock low. At his earliest convenience, he spun about to see who it was, but the name and the avatar of this pilot had discontinued to flicker by then. An instant later he turned back into the fight and it was then that a new report came in from a second pilot.

“I’m hit! I’m hit!”

Sawyer noted the flicker of his avatar an instant behind hearing his transmission. The name, Lt. Landry appeared in his cockpit display at that same instant. His location was at his three o’clock and ten degrees high. He barely had time to register this report when more open transmissions began to come in.

“This is crazy!”

“We can’t do this!”

“Oh God, I’m hit… I’m hit again! I’m…”

“We can’t stay here!”

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“He’s losing control,” Noonan reported with a sharp look towards Joshua. “This is why we should have sent experienced security force officer out there.”

Joshua gave no notice to Noonan’s assertion. His attention was fixed on the monitors in front of him. The progression of the battle had him engrossed and concerned at the same time. Despite Noonan's objections, he saw the battle progressing better than he expected. Before the start of the engagement, he believed that there was a better than even chance that his fighter forces would be overwhelmed within the first minute. This belief was based on the hundreds of hours he spent studying simulator battles. He knew that the formation of the UFP Armada was the strongest configuration they could assume. And he feared that the gamers would break ranks under the stress of an actual battle.

Joshua knew that it would be difficult in the extreme for his fighters to prevail in this fight, but not impossible. He had seen them do this several dozen times in the games. He also knew that the difference between this event and the video game was significant and likely to prove to be too much for his gamers to overcome. This time, their lives were on the line.

"It's too late for that now," Joshua grumbled as he followed the evolution of the battle.

It was Joshua's continued belief that the success or failure of their task was dependent on the gamers. He had seen enough of the capabilities of the security force volunteers to know that there was no chance of them breaking up this enemy formation.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Sawyer, it’s too many! You’re going to get us all killed!”

The panic in the mow pilot’s voice came through the receiver with unblemished clarity. Sawyer gave no thought to identifying the speaker. He was the sixth pilot to break with protocol and transmit his message out in the open. But he was the first to ignore his rank as their Commander and speak directly to him using his given name.

Sawyer was experiencing a growing panic because of his rapidly dwindling control over his command. The sensation had gone unnoticed by him up until this moment. Previously this feeling was being drowned out by his fear. Sawyer did not want to die, and he certainly did not want to die here, now, and like this. But the awareness that he was not doing his job began to push hard into his awareness.

For the first time since the engagement began, Sawyer was giving serious thought to what he should do. His mind wandered to the question, what would Commander Doherty do? His thoughts searched for the correct words, the appropriate bravado, to project to the pilots under his command. This effort, momentarily, compromised his ability to dodge incoming slugs. A volley of seven projectiles came into his awareness at the last moment. He managed to evade them with the assist of a little luck and with an audible "whoa! The effort spurred him into a decision. He will do things his way.

“Okay guys, we know what we have to do. If we’re not doing that, then we’re dying for nothing. We’re gamers! And we’re the best! We didn’t come here to lose. So, let’s do this!”

“I’m with you, Sawyer,” Oscar’s voice yelled into the open communication link an instant behind. “Let’s go Jonah on this whale!”

A second later CC’s voice could be heard yelling in her agreement across the open communication link. A dozen more mow pilots echoed her acknowledgment across the next two seconds. After hearing this Sawyer took a deep breath and commenced to drive his mow towards the center of the UFP formation, ducking and dodging slugs and blazing away with his own rail gun as he thrust forward. Immediately behind him was his entire command. All thoughts of staying within the restrictions of communication protocols were gone. This was all but encouraged by Sawyer.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“They’re going in,” Joshua reported with a sigh of relief.

This was the action that Joshua wanted. He knew that his fighters would have to get inside of this formation if they were to have any chance of breaking it up. Noonan was surprised as well, but neither he nor Joshua were convinced that this would end well. Fifteen seconds into this penetration Noonan’s trepidation took on a new intensity.

“They’re starting to babble!”

Joshua understood exactly what Noonan meant by the word babble. It was a subject of concern several times during the period of training for the gamers. Noonan had warned Joshua that the gamers had a bad habit of talking at random across the communication channel that was assigned to the wing commander. It was this proclivity, more than any other, which sold Joshua on the idea of putting a security force veteran pilot in command of the wings.

“Commander Beck! Commander Beck! You have too…!”

Noonan cut off his call to Sawyer when Joshua barked out a loud “stop!”

Noonan was shocked to see Joshua preventing him from trying to correct this situation. He took a moment to process this, and then he commenced to argue his reasoning on the subject.

"We have to do something. Those kids are about to lose this fight."

“This is their fight,” Joshua countered, unconvincingly. “Let them do it their way.”

"I hope you’re right about this," Noonan responded with a sigh and a shake of his head.

Throughout this exchange, Joshua held his gaze to the large monitor. The outcome of the battle was still very much undecided. The mows looked as if they were submerged within the enemy formation. The flicker of red continued to indicate that they were inflicting far more casualties than they were incurring. But Joshua knew that this exchange did not work in their favor. They had to break apart their formation, and they had to do it soon. 

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

The weight of fire at the center of the UFP formation pried apart an opening just like it had done countless times before in Sawyer’s games. More than three dozen UFP spacefighters, which were positioned in that vicinity, were either destroyed or chased off to make room for the attacking mows. It took less than thirty seconds for Sawyer to lead his entire command into the core of the UFP formation, losing only two along the way.

Suddenly Sawyer had no time to think about what he should or should not be doing. This was something that he did not want to be doing anyway. Everything was instinctive. Everything was familiar. Mentally he was in his game pod once again, and this is where he knew his mind needed to be. He charged into the UFP formation, dodging a hailstorm of crisscrossing fire, with the same reckless abandon he employed in the games. Shortly, he and his entire command were surrounded by enemy fighters and their slugs were raining in on them from all directions. But this too was familiar and had its own disadvantages and advantages.

The rain of slugs pouring in on Sawyer and his command were all programmed to self-destruct shortly after they passed their intended targets. In the past, this meant that the detonation of these nuclear warheads always occurred behind them. In this situation, they were detonating all around them. The vacuum of space severely limited the effects of these detonations. There was no air to heat up or produce a blast wave. The hull of most spaceships had to be within two miles of the blast to become damaged by the thermal energy they released. The capsule inside had to be less than five hundred yards away at the moment of detonation to be compromised by the heat. Because of this limitation warhead detonations invariably did little physical damage. What they did do of consequence was produce a powerful discharge of radiation. For a brief three to five seconds, this intense burst of radiation created a two-hundred-mile-wide disruption in any sensor field that enveloped it.

In the previous engagement, these radiation bursts had no effect on the course of the battle. All these detonations occurred behind the combatants. In this situation, they were detonating all around the starcorp mows and producing a smoke screen of sorts. This had the disadvantage of making it easier for them to get hit by a stray slug. And it had the advantage of making it harder for them to get hit by an aimed slug. It also made it easier for the mows to destroy UFP fighters. This radiation screen provided them with the means to move in close to their adversaries without being seen until the last moment. The targeting and firing speed of the mows gave the advantage to them when they appeared from behind these screens. The UFP spacefighters were no match in these quick draw encounters. An average a mow pilot could take out half a dozen spacefighters in one of these exchanges. And there was nothing average about these mow pilots.

Despite the advantages, the mow pilots enjoyed in this situation it was known to them that they were trapped inside a kill box. They also knew that shredding the enemy formation from the inside out was their only escape from this container. Even in the games, they were loathed to employ this tactic for any reason other than as a final recourse. It was generally accepted by mow pilots that working from the inside out was a high-risk high-reward gamble.

“I need help on my one-clock low, low!”

“Incoming! Eight o’clock high!”

“Incoming! Incoming! Eleven, twelve bottom!”

“They’re bunching up on my three!”

“Trouble coming ten o’clock high!”

“They’re pushing in on my seven low!”

“Incoming, from the top!”

“Can someone break up this group on my five, high, high?”

Contrary to the training the gamers were given on communication procedure, the command wide channel was awash with chatter from a dozen different mow pilots every five seconds. Sawyer made no attempt to curtail this. What messages he did send out during this time, effectively, encouraged it. And this was not without some design on his part.

The grid system that the RG01 Space Force employed had been, from the beginning, a poor fit for the gamers. Commander Noonan’s virtual three-dimensional grid over the battle space enabled everything within it to have an assigned address. This was best utilized when instructions came down the chain of command one level at a time. This enabled the basestar to direct segments of fighter force to a specific area or task. A system for addressing communications to a specific mow or group of mows was built into their communication network. Commanding officers were the only persons permitted to address their communique to everyone under their command, and this they did via a channel assigned to them. This method was set up to prevent a flood of talk from drowning out the messages he sent.

The Gamers were accustomed to their own method communicating and mapping targets in the battlespace. Their system had evolved from two years of trial and error in the games and became a fixed discipline among all gamers. Each player simply called out across the command wide communication channel what they wanted someone else to know. They employed only the basics of the grid. The clock face use to indicate directions from their locations. Up, down, top and bottom was used to indicate elevation. Twelve o'clock was always straight forward, and six o'clock was always straight back. Top was straight up, and bottom was straight down. Between the two, in descending order, was one o'clock top, one o'clock high-high, one o'clock high, one o'clock, one o'clock low, one o'clock low-low, and one o'clock bottom. Each mow pilot decided on the relevance of a message to them by locating the mow that was transmitting it and the location of the threat that was spoken of. Finding the speaker was simply a matter of following the sound to the icon that was flickering when the message came in. The computer in their mows resounded all incoming transmissions from behind the source icon and gave graduated volume to the ones that were closer.

For non-gamers, this system seemed chaotic, and they believed it supported out of control behavior. It allowed for a lot of talk to occur simultaneously. Commander Noonan labeled it gamer’s babble. He concluded that this method of operation was too haphazard and dismissed it. He ruled that the military system was far more conducive to orchestrated attacks. For the gamers this babble was familiar, comfortable and intuitive. It enabled them to do less thinking and more reacting. For Sawyer, it was what he knew best. It relieved him of the task of trying to direct the entire battle or enact instructions from Noonan. Encouraged by the silence from the Orion, Sawyer added his voice to the gamers babble and led his command into the fray.

In the chaos of the battle, Sawyer lost himself inside the game. Reaction time was everything. Enemy spacefighters and projectiles were everywhere. Blind spots were the norm. Open space was the exception. Sawyer had all he could do keeping himself alive. Slugs, infrequently, streaked by at half a dozen yards distant. On rare occasions, they came within inches. Alarms repeatedly blared inside his cockpit from all directions, sometimes simultaneously. It was the fiercest space battle that he had ever been in, outside or inside of the game. He was constantly spinning about in reaction to alerts and messages. He destroyed enemy spacefighters on the order of ten every thirty seconds. He had every reason to believe that he would soon be hit by an incoming slug. Ten minutes into the battle this belief eased off a little. Fifteen minutes in it eased off a lot.

From their position in the interior of the UFP formation Sawyer had neither the time nor the inclination to note the overall effect of his command’s attack. Activating a god’s eye view would have distracted him away from the immediate danger all about him. It was not until the weight of nearby enemy forces began to thin that he became aware that the UFP formation was losing its cohesion.

Like a cloud of smoke disturbed by a minute squirt of air, the UFP formation stretched and pushed back from the collection of mows within their midst. The lessening of volleys coming from the UFP spacefighters was the first impression to alert Sawyer to a change in the progression of the battle. This event decreased the quantity of radiation screens around them, and this, in turn, exposed more space and more targets for the mows to go after.

“Expand and pursue! Expand and pursue!” Sawyer yelled into the command wide communication channel.

No sooner had he given this command did he begin to hear it echoed by more than a dozen other mow pilots. Suddenly the enemy was far more assailable than they had been at any other time during this engagement. It was a snowball effect, and it was the exact event that the mow pilots wanted. In such disarray, the UFP spacefighters were easy targets. Without their numerical advantage working for them, they were exponentially more vulnerable to the mow's superior speed and technology. Sawyer's kill ratio went up to twelve every thirty seconds, and then fifteen, and then eighteen, all in the time span of two minutes. Within a short amount of time, the battle transformed into a killing rampage. The UFP formation was non-existent.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

The battle had been raging for more than seven minutes when its progression appeared to undergo a drastic change. General Gruenberg's attention to the large monitor visibly intensified. He leaned forward to better scrutinize the event that was unfolding before his eyes. The, seemingly invisible wall between the two forces was no longer there. His own forces enveloped the starcorp fighters over the time span of half a dozen seconds.

"What just happened?" Eckhart questioned with an inflection of excitement. "Is that it? Is it over?"

Gruenberg did not give an immediate response to the inquiries. He continued to study the monitor for several more seconds. No one else in the capsule dared to interpret this event on his behalf. Infuriated by the silence, Eckhart made a repeated challenged for an explanation of what was happening.

"I don't know," Gruenberg reported with a hint of bewilderment.

What Gruenberg was seeing confused him at this moment. He expected to see a sudden and drastic increase in the attrition of enemy fighters followed by a complete withdrawal of the remainder. But it was the opposite of this that he was witnessing. The attrition of his forces went on a rapid rise, and the enemy fighters were inserting themselves, on mass, into the midst of their ranks. The digital animation of this resembled a large cloud absorbing a smaller one. Inside this nebulous display a storm appeared to be brewing. The number of green blinks within the cloud grew by a quarter every ten seconds. It did this to the point that it began to look like repetitive discharges of green lightening inside a cloud.

"What do you mean, you don't know?" Eckhart demanded. "This is your plan. What's happening?"

Gruenberg was more than a little unnerved by Eckhart's inquiry. It was the tenor of his voice that provoked this reaction and the fact that he had no immediate answer for the question. There was no explanation he could give for what was happening or where this event was going. He was still counting on the rate of attrition to work to his advantage. But he had no idea how this new enemy tactic would play out and he admitted as much in his repeated response.

"I don't know!"

Despite his displeasure with Gruenberg's reply, Eckhart had no place to go from there on the subject and contented himself to wait out the battle. Along with the others in the capsule, he began to watch in silence as the engagement continued to evolve. It took little more than five minutes for the trend of the battle to become obvious. It took another twenty minutes for this trend to play out to its fruition. At the end of this time, Gruenberg looked to Major Everett and gave him a softly spoken order.

"Recall all spacefighters."

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“They did it,” Noonan acknowledged after a long ten minutes of silence.

The sight of the UFP spacefighters scattered across an area space that was thirty times wider than its original formation had all within the Orion Command Capsule dumbfounded with surprise. The battle was forty-seven minutes old when Noonan ordered all mows to return to the Orion.


	36. Something New

“Martin didn’t come back,” CC decried with a startled expression.

“I know,” Sawyer returned with a look of worry.

They were engaged in this exchange across a video conference link between their two capsules.

“He can still be found,” Sawyer tried to assure after a moment of silence.

CC nodded her agreement. But this did not lessen her fear. Sawyer paused to assess her and then spoke with a pleading inflection that his evaluation produced.

“Don’t go back out. There are plenty of reserve pilots here that can take your place. Stay on the Orion.”

CC gave no immediate response to this request. This was not because she did not know what to say. It had everything to do with her resistance to saying what she wanted to say.

CC knew as well as Sawyer that another engagement with the UFP Armada would likely mean the end of them all. The fire power of the Armada was only marginally reduced despite a very high number of losses. The number of mows lost in the battle was, by comparison, numerically minuscule. But the ratio of loss was proportionally massive. It was obvious to all that another engagement would likely wipe out Orion’s spacefighter force.

“What will you do?” CC queried in a meek voice.

Sawyer did not want to answer this question. He feared how CC would react if she knew of his intention to go out again. He did not want her pride and competitive nature to prevent her from saving herself.

“Don’t worry about me,” Sawyer returned in a soft voice and with a shake of his head.

“You’re going back out!” CC accused with a look of fright.

“You must not go out!” Sawyer insisted over the beeping of his monitor.

CC was hesitant to give a reply. In her silence, Sawyer took a second to note the appearance of Oscar’s name at the bottom of his monitor.

“It’s Oscar,” Sawyer announced as he connected him to the video conference.

An instant after his face appeared on the screen Oscar blurted out a statement with the inflection of a question.

“Martin didn’t come back?”

“No,” Sawyer responded in a somber voice. “He can still be alive. They’re tracking twenty-three cockpit beacons.” 

Sawyer suspected that this was not news to Oscar or CC. A tally of data regarding their engagement with the UFP Armada was available for all to see. They needed only to go online to view it. Among the data displayed there was information on the recovery effort for survivors. Immediately after the battle spaceplanes went about the business of retrieving all cockpits that went active. Information about which cockpit from which mow was withheld. Security protocol forbade the transmission of specific information about the mow, the jettisoned cockpit and the pilot.

When a spaceship was damaged to the extent that it could no longer sustain its occupants the cockpits and the escape pods were the pilots only chance for survival. The beacons inside the cockpit and the escape pod notified all spaceships nearby of their presence and their predicament. Spaceplanes from the Orion were sent out at the start of each battle to retrieve mow cockpits and escape pods with living pilots inside them. During first two hours of this search and retrieval period, these spaceplanes had no competition. The UFP Armada was too scattered to contend with them for the survivors. Despite this advantage, the task of retrieving UFP survivors was left to the UFP. The Orion had no use for prisoners.

To avoid skirmishes with UFP forces, Orion spaceplanes cleared the area of their survivors as quickly as they could. This normally took three to four hours to complete. The flight back to the Orion added another one to two hours to this process. At the start of the second engagement these search and rescue spaceplanes were just returning to the Orion.

The UFP Armada’s search and rescue effort operated in a fashion that was contrary to the Orion. They delayed all efforts to this task until after the Armada had reformed their ranks. This regrouping was a three to four-hour process. The armada’s situation did not require any immediate attention to the survivors. A small group of spacefighters was detached after the Armada regrouped and sent out after the survivors, wherever they were, and for however long it would take to retrieve them. The armada continued without them. Because of this difference in the way they went about it, there was no interaction between their search and rescue teams.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Joshua transmitted his battle report to Gourmand, shortly, after the surviving mows were back aboard the Orion. In the report, he advised that he had seventy-nine mows left, that he added another ten hours to the UFP's transit time to Mars and that his command would not survive a third engagement with the UFP Armada. Less than an hour after sending this message he got a reply from Gourmand.

“Well done, Admiral Sloan. This should give us the time we need. Avoid any future engagements with the enemy as best you can but stay within proximity of the UFP force for now. I will let you know when you can break away.”

Joshua was partially pleased with this reply. He did not want to send the gamers back out to engage with the UFP Armada and he was relieved by the order to stay away. He would have been better pleased if Gourmand had given him permission to leave. He would have liked to have been able to exploit the UFP Armada's disarray to make his escape. He feared and suspected that the UFP would turn their efforts toward capturing or destroying the Orion when they discovered all the starcorp's had escaped.

From the beginning, Joshua suspected that the goal of this UFP force was to get to Mars as quickly as possible. The speed of their launch from Earth and the absence of any effort to communicate with the starcorp leaders suggested to him that they were aware of a time limit. If this was not true, he rationalized that they would have devoted much more time to the preparation for this battle. He also believed that they would have devoted a lot more time to discussing this new situation with the starcorps. Since neither of these was the case, it only made sense to him that the UFP knew or suspected what was happening in Mars orbit. As the supreme military commander of the starcorps, he felt it was his task to identify the worst-case scenario and to prepare for it.

"Why do they want us to stay here?" Noonan questioned with an annoyed inflection. "We should be racing away from here while that UFP Armada is still trying to pull itself back together."

"They want us in a position to engage again if anything goes wrong," Joshua explained in a depressed tone of voice.

"We cannot engage with that armada for a third time!" Noonan insisted with emphatically. "There will be nothing left of us by the end of it!"

Joshua showed no signs that he was affected by Noonan's impassioned outburst. He understood that it was not directed at him, and he wished that the thinking was not true. Joshua said nothing more until the last spaceplane returned to the Orion, twelve minutes later.

"Lucas, put us on the UFP forces’ three o’clock position. Keep the same distance between us and match their speed," Joshua instructed the crewman two positions forward and one to the right.

"What’s that going to do?" Noonan questioned with a confused expression.

"Keep us alive, I hope,"' Joshua returned.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Our spacefighter losses total one-thousand and forty-four, sir,” the crewman seated at the far front and to the left reported.

General Gruenberg and the VIP passengers seated behind him spent the two hours following the second engagement monitoring the reformation process of the armada. Up until this moment they had nothing more than a ballpark figure for the number of spacefighters they lost in the second engagement. There were more than three dozen spacefighters that appeared to be intact that later showed to be damaged beyond use. This information could only be determined by canvassing the commander of each spacefighter.

Gruenberg was already making plans for his next assault. He had learned within a handful of minutes after the last engagement that the Orion had lost close to two-hundred of its spacefighters in the last engagement. Knowledge of his own losses gave him the data he needed to assess the enemy's capability. He calculated that the basestar’s spacefighter force would likely not survive a third engagement. This was a point he was quick to share with Eckhart.

"You said that before the last assault, and they outsmarted you. Why should I believe you this time?"

"They lost more than half of their spacefighters in that engagement," Gruenberg defended. "They can't endure losses like that again. They're beaten."

Eckhart already came to the same conclusion as Gruenberg, but he was impatient for this promised outcome. Finding excuses to denigrate the commander had become a release for his annoyance.

"Let's hope you're right this time," Eckhart exclaimed in a derogatory tone of speech.

Gruenberg paid no heed the insolence in his manner per his nature. He thought little of politicians and only indulged them for whatever time that was necessary to finally be rid of them.

"How long before we can commence the next attack?" Eckhart questioned with a demanding inflection.

Gruenberg promised to start the next engagement within the next three to four hours. In his thoughts, this answer was not taken well by Eckhart. He would have much preferred a report of one to two hours. He had learned from the period between the first and second engagements that Gruenberg calculated a brief respite into this time frame. This was an expenditure of time that Eckhart was not keen on accepting. But his annoyance with his General of the Space Force had not risen so far that he was ready to tell him his business. He accepted the time frame with a grumble and a scowl.

Thirty minutes into this countdown to the next assault, General Gruenberg, his commander and chief; Eckhart, and all others aboard their spaceplane were suddenly startled by a new event. The crewman seated second from the front and to the right shouted out a report with an inflection of amazement in his tone.

"The warship is moving away!"

All within the capsule were quick to take notice of this on the large monitor. Brief burns from the basestar’s main thrusters illuminated it against the black backdrop of space.

"What's it doing?" Eckhart challenged.

Gruenberg was swift to respond with an "I don't know."

"Shall I follow?" The crewman at the front right questioned in a hurry.

"Has it increased its speed?"

"No," the crewman retorted to Gruenberg's question. “It looks like a lateral move.”

"Stay on course and hold your speed," Gruenberg returned after a second of thought.

"What's going on?" Eckhart challenged in an angry voice.

“The warship is shifting its position, but it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere,” Gruenberg explained as though he was thinking it as he said it.

“And what does that mean?” Eckhart queried back.

Gruenberg muttered out a reply to this with little thought behind it. 

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, should we stay with it?” Eckhart challenged with an obvious display of annoyance.

“No!” Gruenberg sharply overruled. “We haven’t finished reforming our ranks, and it’s not trying to get away.”

Eckhart accepted this decision without question. His primary reason for this was the vehemence in which it was expressed. Eckhart followed the movement of the basestar for the next three hours, along with Gruenberg and all the others in the capsule. By the end of this time, the armada was back in formation. It was at this time that Gruenberg called out to the crewman in the right front seat for a report.

“It’s holding station at our three o’clock. The distance is nearly the same as before.”

“What’s it doing out there?” Eckhart questioned to anyone with an answer.

“The commander of that warship must be trying to get us to divide our forces,’ Wilkinson spoke up in response to the query.

“I think you're right,” Peter Carr supported. “He probably doesn't want to take us on at full strength.”

Gruenberg had been considering this for the past two hours, but he had yet to convince himself it was true. There was an aspect of this scheme that did not make sense to him. The basestar was giving him an open path to Mars. He could not believe that the commander would do this just to divide his forces. This gave him cause to be concerned about what might be waiting for them at Mars. He pondered this until Eckhart awakened him several seconds after Carr’s last remark.

“So, what do we do?”

“All ships, thirty percent power to main thrusters. Hold course on Mars.”

Gruenberg shouted this command to his crew sitting in front of him.

“What are you thinking, General,” Eckhart questioned with a look of concern.

“I’m thinking this warship can wait.”

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Sawyer, CC, and Oscar had been conversing across their video conference connection for little more than thirty minutes when Noonan gave the lights out order to all gamer space capsules. In giving this order, he advised that they needed to get some rest while they could. Sawyer, CC, and Oscar, promptly, complied with the order and shut down their video conference. More than anything else, this was done out of concern that Noonan would take note of their continuing communication. They knew that their connection would appear as data on his monitor.

Sawyer did not feel a need to go to sleep. The nervous energy that had been churning inside of him from the beginning of this intercept with the UFP Armada was keeping him awake and alert. Their prolonged time in zero gravity had done much to hold off his exhaustion in the past. Despite these factors the backlog of sleep shortly caught up with Sawyer in the enforced quiet and darkness inside his space capsule. He fell deeply into sleep within the first fifteen minutes. He was awakened, nearly six hours later, by a beeping coming from his monitor. After straightening up in his acceleration chair, he looked at his monitor for the cause of this alert. To his surprise and delight, he noted that Martin was calling in. He activated the connection a second behind this discovery.

"Hey!" Sawyer called after Martin's image appeared on his monitor.

CC's image was on the monitor too. Her expression was a mixture of joy and relief. Oscar popped onto the screen two seconds behind Sawyer's appearance in the video connection. His presence came about via an invitation from CC.

"Hi," Martin returned in a demure voice.

"Ah man, you made it," Oscar cried out with exuberance.

"Yeah, I'm still alive," Martin responded with a shrug.

There was a moment of silence as all waited for more from Martin. When Sawyer concluded that this was all that they were going to get, he spoke again.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah," Martin professed with a nod of his head. "It was scary. But yeah, I'm okay."

"What happened?"

Martin was slow to respond to Sawyer's question. His expression reflected his reluctance to relive this recent experience. This was apparent to the extent that Sawyer came to the decision that he needed to withdraw the question. But before he could do this, Martin went into his narration of the past four hours of his life. He showed little regard for the battle. For his listeners, it seemed as if the space-fight had no effect on him. When he commenced speaking about the event that took him out of the fight, his voice took on a far more somber tone.

"I didn't have time to react. A slug from out of nowhere ripped into my mow. I heard alarms all around me, but I don't know from which direction it came. The display flickered with static. I-I couldn't do anything. I couldn't see anything. It all happened so fast. Before I could—think about... It just happened so fast. I don't know how many times I was hit—four—maybe as many as seven. I knew I was spinning. Centrifugal force kept pulling at. I came close to slamming into the wall of the cockpit a couple of times. The display went all the way out after the third hit. The alarms went out. I was in the dark for three or four seconds, and the emergency lights kicked in. Everything kind of went quiet. I started to float back towards the center of the cockpit. There was just silence. I didn't know what was going happen next. I-I was terrified that a slug was going to rip right through cockpit at any moment. The next thing I knew, the magnetic arms of my escape pod was pulling me in. I climbed into it as fast as I could. The lid closed as soon as I was in. There was a sudden sensation of acceleration and then nothing. The whole thing happened so fast. There was nothing I could do to stop it or prevent it. From start to finish it couldn't have been more than—thirty seconds. I couldn't hear or see anything. But I did feel the escape pod being detach from the mow. I think I had been floating through space for about two minutes before the hibernation program put me to sleep. After that, I woke up inside an RG01 spaceplane. That was an hour-ago."

Sawyer, CC, and Oscar listened to his narration without question or comment. For a brief time after, nothing was said while they all digested this report. At the end of this time, CC spoke up in a manner that was designed to ease the tension.

"Well, you're back now, and we're happy to see you."

Martin's expression remained sullen behind this, and his response came out like a reflex action.

"I'm not going back out there."

Sawyer and CC were quick to reassure Martin that he did not have to go out again. Oscar, a few seconds late, gave his support to this, as well. Despite their assurances, they were of the opinions that a high skill level in every pilot would be crucial for the next engagement. They all knew that security force veterans were ill-equipped to meet this challenge. The survival of all required that the mows were piloted by gamers. They had no illusions about winning a third fight with the UFP Armada or even breaking its formation. Their only thought at this point was surviving it. The gamers had learned from the video games that the only chance they had against odds like this was with the help of a basestar.

The Orion had a massive array of rail guns and directed energy projectors. By positioning themselves around the basestar, the mows could multiply their firepower. But this was a last-ditch gambit. In a close-quarters fight with a force as large as the UFP Armada, a single basestar would be at a disadvantage. The best that they could hope for was that the UFP Armada would take little interest in them. Without the extended presence of the mows, the armada now had the option of using a portion of its forces to keep the basestar distracted while pressing on to Mars with the remainder. The Orion and its compliment of fighters were in no position to contest this. Defense was the only posture available to them in any third engagement.

"How long have we been sleeping?" Sawyer queried with an inflection of suspicion.

Sawyer looked at the clock on his monitor even as he spoke. It dawned on him at this moment that Martin had to have been off the Orion for at least four hours and likely closer to six. This was the usual length of time that the search and rescue spaceplanes spent off the basestar.

"You're right," Oscar gushed out with a look of surprise. "It's been over five hours."

The inference in Sawyer's question did not go unnoticed by anyone. They all knew that Noonan should have roused them more than two hours earlier and set them to the task of preparing for their next engagement.

"Do you think it's over, Sawyer?" CC questioned with an inflection of hope.

"Why wouldn't they tell us if it was over?" Oscar questioned with a shrug.

Sawyer was already entertaining that question. It made no sense to him that Admiral Sloan would or could keep this information a secret. The support crew members would have been given new orders if the battle was over. And they, in turn, would have passed it on to the pilots. It was during these moments that Sawyer disliked the military restrictions on the flow of information. He was accustomed to having access to much of the data that was fed into the command space capsules of civilian starships.

"Something new must be happening," Sawyer muttered out to himself more than anyone else.

All the Gamers wakened from their slumber over the next thirty minutes and joined in on the confusion about what was happening. Sawyer’s belief that a change in their situation had occurred spread rapidly through the ranks of the mow pilots. Joshua's report to the crew on the status of things came two hours later. In it, he advised that they had completed their task and would not be initiating any more engagements to slow the UFP Armada unless ordered to do so by BX01.

"We are waiting for the order to break away. Until then we will limit ourselves to shadowing the UFP Armada."

This last bit of news from Joshua produced applause from crew members throughout the basestar. The gamers were the most enthusiastic participants in this. But this enthusiasm shortly turned to boredom. For the next thirteen hours, the crew of the Orion had little to do, and for the pilots this was doubly true. The habitat ring was off limits to all ship’s personnel while the basestar was in combat ready mode. For most aboard the basestar, without anything to do, the space capsules began to feel like community coffins with built-in entertainment centers. The pilots could do nothing but wait for word that they were free to break away from the UFP Armada. Admiral Sloan received his permit to break away near the end of a fourteen-hour wait. He passed this on to his crew as soon as he got it. It was another two hours after that when the gamers heard the call to battle stations.


	37. Fight or Flight

Gruenberg had been content to let the starcorp basestar shadow them since its move to their three o’clock position twenty hours earlier. When the basestar matched his acceleration, he became less so. He could not help but worry that he was falling into a trap. He pondered the idea that the starcorps had a large force of these new spacefighters waiting for them in Mars orbit. But this thought continuously failed to make sense when he examined it thoroughly. He could not reconcile the losses that the basestar absorbed so far with the presence of a large contingent of spacefighters sitting idle at Mars. If they had the means to defeat them, they should have done it ahead of their arrival to Mars orbit. And if they did not have this means then they should not be allowing them to approach the planet unchallenged. This thinking had been rolling about in his head for the past twenty hours. At the end of this time, when the basestar turned and began to move away at a high rate of acceleration, Gruenberg began to see the logic behind their action.

“What’s happening?” Eckhart demanded after hearing the sensor operator's report on the basestar's turn and acceleration away from them.

Gruenberg was hesitant to respond to this. His brain was still putting the puzzle pieces together.

“They can’t be running,” Wilkinson thought out loud. “They would be leaving Mars defenseless.”

“They are running,” Gruenberg corrected even as he was mentally putting the last puzzle piece in its place. “There’s nothing left at Mars to defend.”

Eckhart was shocked by this announcement. The last thing he wanted to hear was that the starcorps got away.

“What do you mean, there’s nothing left?” Eckhart challenged without giving any thought to the question.

“We’re too late,” Gruenberg reported with a sigh. “My guess is that the starcorp fleet has already left.”

The fact that Wilkinson and Carr appeared to agree with this position made it all the truer in Eckhart’s mind. He could do nothing but fume while he assimilated this. All others waited on him to speak again. Ten seconds later he did.

“What do we do now?” Eckhart grumbled towards Gruenberg.

“We can continue on to Mars and secure what has been left behind,” Gruenberg offered tentatively.

“What about the warship,” Eckhart raged at Gruenberg. “Can we catch it? Can we stop it?”

This question came as no surprise to Gruenberg. He had little doubt that Eckhart would want that basestar and, more importantly, the star-drive within it. This was a task that was well within the boundaries of Gruenberg's ethics to complete. He was more than a little excited about the prospect of re-engaging with the basestar. It was a trophy that he was eager to acquire. But his military training told him that this hunt was contrary to the armada's defined objective. They needed only to continue to Mars to complete the mission. To do otherwise was a divergence from his written orders.

"Prime Minister, pursuing the warship is outside of our assigned objective."

"I decide what our assigned objective is," Eckhart roared back at his General. "And I remind you, General Gruenberg, you take orders from me."

Gruenberg took no offense from this rebuke. In his mind, Eckhart's bluster had set things right with him. He was obeying an order once again, and any wrongdoing in this act now belonged to Eckhart and not him. With an order, which he broadcasted to all his spacefighters, Gruenberg turned his entire armada and set them on the chase for the starcorp basestar.

"Can we catch them?" Eckhart questioned an instant after the order was sent.

"Yes, we can," Gruenberg reported with discerning confidence.

Gruenberg's aplomb was well supported. The basestar had no chance of accelerating away from his armada. The small size of the spacefighters, relative to the basestar, enabled them to tolerate ten times more inertia. This was because their Zero G Field energy requirement was a thousand times smaller than the basestar’s. In addition, the basestar was too near for a contest of engine burn duration to be a factor in this chase. The spacefighters had near to cutting-edge thrusters with equivalent burn timespans as the basestar. Gruenberg calculated that the armada would be in the lethal range of their guns inside of five hours.

"What will happen then?" Eckhart grumbled with a concerned expression.

"Then we will either capture it or destroy it, Prime Minister," Gruenberg answered with a casual delivery.

"And what makes you so sure of this?" Eckhart challenged with a stern look. "Why can't they just activate this star-drive and escape?"

"Your scientists and engineers tell us that they will likely need to reach a minimum speed before the star-drive will work," Gruenberg commenced to explain to Eckhart. "And they are more than ten hours away from that speed, probably closer to fifteen. Their lead is too small to make that time before we catch up with them. The starcorp warship will have to engage us directly long before then. And when that happens, we've got them."

"Why?"

"You can't run and evade at the same time."

Eckhart did not need any explanation for this. He knew that the basestar's forward momentum would be slowed with every hard turn that it was forced to make. But he still was not convinced that the spacers did not have another trick up its sleeve. When he challenged Gruenberg on this, he got back an answer that gave him reason to believe.

"Prime Minister, if that warship had the means to beat off this armada it would have done it ahead of sacrificing more than half of its spacefighters."

Gruenberg was ninety minutes into its pursuit of the basestar when Gourmand’s message to the inhabitants of the Sol System began to pass through the armada.

"This message is for the people of Earth. My name is Eric Gourmand. I am the Chairperson for the BX01 Starcorp League. I know that the activities of the starcorp community have given all of you a reason to be concerned about our intentions. I give you my word that you have no reason to worry. It is not now, nor has it ever been our plan to do harm to the people of Earth or any holdings belonging to you. We have no intentions of stopping or disrupting the import of foodstuff from Mars. The actions that we have recently undertaken are the first steps to our departure out of the Sol System. We, the starcorp community, have been working in secrecy towards this end for the past two decades. Today this plan is being realized. I know that the relationship between us has been contentious at times. I will not deny our share of the blame for this. But we do want you to know that the well-being of Earth's inhabitants was the guiding star behind our actions. On behalf of the BX01 Starcorp community, good-bye and good fortunes."

Shortly after this message had passed through the armada more than two-thirds of its force began to break away, much to the shock of all within the command and control spacefighter.

“What’s happening?” Eckhart bellowed towards all within the capsule.

“We’re losing our armada,” Gruenberg reported with a shake of his head.

“Well, get them back,” Eckhart roared at his General.

“And how do I do that?” Gruenberg returned with a look of surprise. “You can command me, Prime Minister, but you have no such authority over the commanders from other states. They have their orders.”

Eckhart was not deterred by this. He opened a communication channel that all the spacefighters would receive and bellowed out a command that they all stay with the chase. Despite repeated calls to this effect, all two-thirds of the armada continued to fall away. None chose to express cause for their decision to leave.

“They’re still falling away,” the sensor operator called out for all to hear.

This report convinced Eckhart that his efforts were not going to succeed. He turned his attention to the situation he was left with.

“How many spacefighters do we have?” Eckhart questioned his General.

The answer that came back was four hundred and fifty-seven. Eckhart responded to this report with an expression that was an outgrowth of his extreme frustration. Wilkinson and Carr noted same with looks of defeat.

“We don’t have enough spacefighters for another engagement,” Wilkinson sighed out after a pause. “We have to turn back.”

Eckhart gave no response to this. He did not hear anything that he was not already thinking. He maintained a fixed stare at his personal monitor as he fumed over the failure to do all that he hoped to do.

“I agree,” Peter Carr voiced with an inflection of reluctance. “We can’t win against their spacefighters.”

In response to Carr’s declaration, Eckhart sucked in a deep breath and heaved it out a second later. His attention remained fixed on the monitor in front of him. And his expression went from stunned to hard with anger. He held this look right up until the moment that Gruenberg enunciated his opinion on the subject.

“We don't have to.”

Eckhart swiveled his attention towards Gruenberg with a quick turn of his head, and then he challenged him to explain what he meant by that remark.

“The warship is the target, not the fighters,” Gruenberg explained as though he was teaching something simple to someone very smart.

"But we have to get past the fighters to get to it," Wilkinson disputed.

Gruenberg looked to Eckhart when he spoke his reply to this challenge.

“We don't have to engage with their spacefighters to do this. We spread out our forces and go around the spacefighters. We have the numbers to do this."

Wilkinson was quick to take exception with this.

"There's no going around them," Wilkinson contradicted. "It doesn't matter that we outnumber them. They're too fast. We cannot scatter our fighters. Alone, or in small groups, our spacefighters are all but defenseless against those starcorp spacefighters. We will lose a minimum of half our spacefighters with this strategy!"

Wilkinson directed the last portion of this remark at Eckhart and delivered it with emphatic emphasis. Gruenberg endured this challenge with indifference. When Wilkinson finished speaking, he turned his gaze towards Eckhart and responded to it.

"By my calculation, more than twenty, possibly as many as fifty, will get through, Prime Minister. All we must do is punch one hole in that warship and it will be stranded here until it repairs the damage. And without the starcorps that could take more than a year."

"What about the warship," Carr queried with a confused expression. "Won't it have defensive weapons?"

"Undoubtedly," Gruenberg returned with a nod. "And its defenses are probably extensive. But its primary defensive weapon is its fighters. When there was two hundred and eighty-four of them, we would be lucky to get five spacefighters out of a thousand within lethal range of that warship. But there is only seventy-nine of them now. We have a chance. It can be done.

“By sacrificing seventy percent of our force,” Wilkinson railed back.

In response to this, Gruenberg turned his argument towards Eckhart and continued to sell it.

“It will come at a cost, Prime Minister. But if twenty of our spacefighters gets close enough to launch a large salvo then the odds are good we'll get some hits. That warship is slow and clumsy. Just one hit, Prime Minister. After that, it's ours—Checkmate."

Carr and Wilkinson thought this reply clarified the situation enough to need no further argument from them. Both men were still concerned about the losses. They both knew that this plan would require sending more than half of the crews in their spacefighter force to near certain death. But they resigned themselves to the fact that the decision was not theirs. In Eckhart’s thinking, these losses were not a consideration. He had heard enough to need but one question answered to become sold on it.

“Will this scheme work?”

Gruenberg gave Eckhart an unwavering look before speaking the one answer he believed to be an appropriate reply.

“It’s the only scheme that will, Prime Minister.”

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Joshua called all ship's personnel to battle stations once the entire UFP Armada had turned and was racing towards them. He had anticipated that this might be a consequence of their actions and dreaded it.

"They figured it out," Noonan commented twenty minutes into the armada's turn toward them. "What do we do?

Noonan knew that there was only one viable defense left to them. The guns of the Orion had to be brought to bear against the armada if the remaining mows were to have any chance of surviving a third engagement. His question to Joshua was his way of making sure that they were of the same mind on this.

"There's nothing we can do," Joshua returned after a long pause.

"We can put up a fight," Noonan disputed. "The UFP hasn't faced the guns of the Orion yet."

"We don't stand a chance against a force that size," Joshua corrected.

"Yeah, but we can give them one hell of a bloody nose," Noonan argued back. "They just might decide to cut their losses and let us go."

"That would be nice," Joshua agreed halfheartedly. "But I don't think they would have turned to pursue us if they were inclined to do this."

"So, what are you saying?" Noonan questioned with a confused expression.

Joshua gave the query a short time to hang in the air between them before giving his answer with a heavy undertone of glum.

"We can't let them get their hands on the Orion."

Noonan comprehended what Joshua meant by this an instant after he said it. The Orion had to be destroyed to protect the secrets within it. This was not an outcome that he had entertained in the past. And it was not one that he was interested in considering at the present. Noonan was full of fight. He did not like being replaced by a bunch of teenage gamers and sidelined. Thinking about scuttling the basestar before firing its first shot in anger conflicted with his fighting nature.

"We have to at least try to give them a fight," Noonan insisted with a stern delivery. "We can't just give up."

Joshua elected to give no response to this. He understood Noonan's passion, but he did not share his thirst for the fight. From the beginning of this struggle, the loss of every pilot weighed on his conscious. It was his decision to enlist the gamers into this conflict. It was his words that convinced them to risk life and limb for this cause. He had no desire to add more casualties to a cause that looked to be lost. He knew he could save the life of everyone aboard the Orion by initiating the self-destruct program. This would set into motion an automated evacuation process. The space capsules would be jettisoned into space and the reactors aboard the Orion would detonate when the capsules were in the clear. But this was a decision he was not prepared to make at this moment.

“Maintain battle stations,” Joshua called out to his crew. “Keep all weapons charged and at the ready.”

These commands came like music to Noonan’s ears. He was happy to hear that Orion’s combat computer and the weapons it operated were to remain at the ready. But Joshua knew that this preparation was no guarantee that they would ever fire a shot. It was estimated that the UFP was five hours away from lethal range, and they were fourteen hours away from their time jump. The Orion was accelerating towards the outer solar system at its best possible acceleration under the circumstances. The sensor field was consuming near to forty percent of the power that was being generated by Orion’s reactors. This was power that Joshua wanted to apply to the basestar’s engines and Anti-Gravity Generator. But the continued presence of the UFP Armada made the sensor field a necessity.

Despite this inconvenience, Joshua was determined to buy himself as much time as he could. This included using the weapons systems of the Orion if and when circumstances made them a viable option for the escape of ship and crew. This circumstance came into existence eighty minutes later.

The video message from Chairperson Gourmand came as a complete surprise to Joshua and the crew of the Orion. Even though the message was intended for the people of earth, all aboard listened to every word of it. There was no expectation in any of them that this would cause some change in their situation. Shortly after the message completed, they noted that it produced a welcome surprise.

“Admiral, a large portion of the UFP force is turning away,” the sensor operator called out in an excited voice.

“How large?” Joshua questioned back in a hurry.

“More than half their numbers are splitting off from the chase,” the crewman answered back with equal haste.

“Give me a count on the remainder,” Joshua instructed with new enthusiasm in his tone.

The UFP Armada was still in the act of separating. It took more than a minute for the divide to complete. When this was done, the crewman reported that four hundred and fifty-seven spacefighters were still pursuing them.

“We have them beat,” Noonan declared with excited relief. 

Silently Joshua agreed with this, but he was reluctant to say so out loud. He calculated that his remaining seventy-nine mows could decimate the pursuing spacefighter force at a loss of a quarter to a third of their own. And this was without the assist of Orion’s guns. He expected his pursuers to come to this same conclusion and turn back. To emphasize this fact to them, Joshua ordered the deployment of the mows.

There was no change in the course from the UFP force ten minutes after the deployment of the seventy-nine mows of the Orion. Joshua began to ponder the logic of their continued pursuit. In his thoughts, he questioned if they had a chance of winning a third engagement. This query sent him on a search for the Achilles heel of his situation. He found it thirty minutes later.

"They’re spreading out,” Noonan reported.

The four hundred and fifty-seven UFP spacefighters began to disperse. It was obvious to all that this was in reaction to the deployment of Orion's seventy-nine mows. What had Noonan so confused was the fact that this was, in his mind, the worst possible thing they could do.

"They don't want to take on our fighters," Joshua spoke while pondering what he was seeing.

"I don't plan to give them a choice in the matter," Noonan declared with defiance.

After making this statement, Noonan ordered the mows to pursue and destroy the UFP forces. He saw no reason to ask for Joshua's permission for this given his original mandate to engage them.

"Recall the mows."

Joshua’s countermanded came after a sudden realization that the UFP spacefighters were going to attempt an end run around their mows. It took him a second of thought to conclude that this had a chance of working.

"We have to do this," Noonan insisted.

"We can't extend the mows out to run down these spacefighters," Joshua disputed with a sternness in his voice. "Get the mows back inside."

“We can’t let those spacefighters get within range of this basestar,” Noonan retorted with an expression of shock.

“We can’t stop them,” Joshua roared back. “Do it!”

Noonan was reluctant to comply with Joshua's order. The reasoning behind it eluded him. Noonan understood that the UFP force behind them was about to attempt a desperate gamble. But in his mind going after these spacefighters became even more important because of this. He thought it better to try and negate this gamble then to do nothing. Despite this thinking, he complied with Joshua’s order and called back the mows. After doing this, he turned to Joshua and expressed his thinking.

"Admiral, we have to destroy those spacefighters.”

"We won’t get them all in time," Joshua responded in a soft voice, his eyes staring into the space in front of him and with a mild shake of his head.

"We still have to try, Admiral," Noonan insisted. "We have no other choice."

"No, Commander," Joshua responded with a heavy accent of regret. “We have one.”


	38. Last Call to Arms

Sawyer had been outside of the Orion for little more than thirty minutes when he got the order to return to the basestar. This instruction came as a surprise to him. He, and the seventy-eight other mow pilots had yet to engage with the UFP force that was pursuing the Orion. Sawyer suspected that this change of plan had something to do with the sudden dispersal of the UFP spacefighters. This was an unexpected event, but it was not an unwelcome one. Sawyer knew that engaging the spacefighters would be a far simpler task while they were separated. When they attacked them as isolated targets, they had only the one gun aboard the spacefighter to contend with. While the spacefighters were in formation, the mows had to deal with the guns from multiple spacefighters with each engagement.

As it was in the sortie before, Sawyer was given the commission of wing commander. After transmitting a return to base directive to the wing, all seventy-nine mows turned about and commenced to thrust back towards the Orion. It took twice that amount time to get all of them back inside. This was due to the basestar’s high-powered acceleration in the opposite direction. After each mow docked, the pilot vacated it and went back to their assigned space capsule. Once inside there was nothing for them to do but wait for news and orders.

Marvin was not one of the pilots that went out on this sortie. But this was due to the sudden fall-off of two-thirds of the UFP Armada. Immediately after this, the overwhelming majority of the gamers took the view that they would likely survive the next encounter with the UFP. The gamers knew that their skills were in high demand and that they gave the Orion its best chance for escape. When the gamers took to their assigned mows, there was none left that was unoccupied. When Sawyer, CC, and Oscar returned to the basestar unharmed Marvin welcomed them back with a hefty display of relief.

"What happened out there?" Marvin queried to anyone with an answer.

"I have no idea, man," Oscar returned with exuberance. "I was all pumped up for a fight and then I hear Sawyer telling everybody to return to the basestar."

"Those were my orders," Joshua defended from across their video conference link.

"They didn't tell you why?" Marvin questioned back.

"They didn't tell me anything."

"It had to have something to do with the UFP scattering away from us," CC suggested with a ponderous expression.

The scatter tactic was nothing new to the Gamers. Each of them had seen it used in the video games on more than one occasion. But in the game, the basestars were never running from the conflict. They did make every effort to stay out of range of the sensor fields of enemy spacefighters, and they used their intrinsic stealth and evasive maneuvers to stay hidden from them. This was the standard counter tactic to a widely-dispersed fighter force. This put the spacefighters in the position of having to search for it. This they did in pairs or in small groups. This effort always produced a waste of valuable time. And this, in turn, made the spacefighters, extremely vulnerable to the mows that were defending the basestar. Time was not on the side of the spacefighters. When they did find the basestar the spacefighters learned it was quite capable of putting up a fight. To overcome it defenses the spacefighters needed to engage it in unison and preferably in double digit numbers. This was necessary if they were to have any hope of overwhelming its defensive weaponry and hitting it.

The time jump made this situation different. The idea of a star-drive was never programmed into the game. The games were about engaging and destroying the enemy. The strategy of the basestar was always to evade and endure. In this situation, the basestar was obliged to stay on a straight-line trajectory to maintain acceleration. Its main thruster was engaged in a continuous burn. This made it easily visible and prevented the basestar from employing a stealthy posture. But the gamers were not immediately cognizant of this difference between the game and this reality. Their first thought was to dismiss this scatter tactic as a desperate and foolish plan. Marvin was the first among their group to touch upon the reasoning behind the recall.

"Maybe the Admiral was afraid that some of them would get past you."

"Why would he think that?" Oscar questioned with an intonation of incredulity. "There's only four hundred of them. We could have destroyed them all."

"Maybe not in time," Sawyer pondered out loud.

"What do you mean, Sawyer?" CC queried with a look of confusion.

"We're accelerating for this time jump to Proxima Centauri," Sawyer explained as he worked it out in his thoughts. "The basestar can't hide while it's accelerating, and we dare not throw away this momentum. We might not be able to attain this velocity again, and the other portion of the UFP Armada could change its mind and come after us, as well."

The truth of this idea was quick to register in the thinking of the others. They all said nothing while they gave it thought for a further. At the end of this rumination they shrugged it off as just a possibility. Over the next five hours, this thinking crept into the thoughts of all mow pilots. Infrequent reports on the pursuing UFP spacefighters came in from the command capsule during this time. The message was always the same, “the UFP is still in pursuit and closing.” While this was happening, the mow pilots had nothing to do but wait for orders in anxious silence. They all feared what these orders might be given their situation and the limited options. At the end of this wait, Admiral Joshua Sloan’s image popped up on their monitors and his voice resonated through their speakers.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Immediately after hearing that the last mow had been secured aboard the Orion Joshua barked out an order to reduce the sensor field down to two percent power and to divert the reclaimed power to the thrusters and the anti-gravity field generators. This act increased their acceleration to a new maximum.

The weight of acceleration was determined by the division of power between the main thrusters, the sensor field, and the anti-gravity generator. The latter canceled out the stress of inertia on the ship and its occupants and required more energy as the weight of acceleration increased. The power that was recouped from the sensor field generator gave the basestar a large boost in thrust. Less than a minute after this change the navigator reported that lethal range for the UFP Armada had been extended out from two hours to five.

This change in power distribution reduced the basestar's sensor field to the lethal range of the fastest projectile that the armada had the potential of launching. Joshua concluded that he had no need to see beyond this distance. He knew that the UFP Armada was behind them and closing, and that there was nothing else around that he needed to concern himself with. The power to accelerate as fast as possible was what he wanted at this moment. He also knew that the armada would engage with them three hours before the Orion could make its jump.

"We're not going to make it to the jump, Admiral" Noonan advised with a fixed stare. "We need to turn about now and fight while there is still time."

Joshua had no ready response for this. He understood Noonan's thinking that they had just enough time to lose themselves in the black. To achieve this, he needed only to shut down his main thrusters, push off laterally with secondary thrusters and assume a stealthy posture. Radar was all but useless for finding a warship in stealth mode in the vast distances of space, and visual sightings from a distance were almost impossible if the spaceship was not emitting any light. Given their five-hour lead, it was now or never for the deployment of this defensive posture. But Joshua knew that a defensive posture was a far greater gamble than it was two hours earlier. The UFP spacefighters were closer which meant that the area of space for them to hide in would be smaller.

Joshua believed that there was a second option that offered them a better chance for escape. This alternate plan of action was one that he loathed to put into action, but of the two it was the option that he loathed the least. His thoughts teetered between putting up a fight on a risky plan that might cost him the basestar and a significant portion of his crew, or gamble on a less risky plan at a cost of a small portion of his crew.

"No, we're not going to do that," Joshua retorted after a long thought.

This reply shocked Noonan. He saw no other way out of this situation. The fact that Joshua looked to be clinging to an idea that they could avoid any further fighting with the UFP began to produce thoughts in him that Admiral Joshua Sloan was mentally unfit for command. Because of this concern he felt compelled to challenge his thinking.

"What are you going to do when they catch up with us, Admiral?"

Joshua was reluctant to answer this question. He still had hope that the pursuing UFP Spacefighters would follow the lead of others and turn back for Mars. In his mind, this was the reasonable thing to do. It made no sense to continue the pursuit. The commander of that force had to know that he would not surrender the Orion to them. It only made sense that he would have orders to destroy the basestar if he could not escape with it.

"I will cross that bridge when I come to it," Joshua returned after a thought.

Joshua knew that this answer was not what Noonan wanted or expected to hear. He knew that Noonan wanted to hear exactly what plan he had in mind to address the situation that they were in. But this was information that Joshua did not want to give. He suspected that it would not sit well with his second in command, and he held onto hope that the UFP force behind them would give up the chase. Joshua did not want to entertain this conversation if he did not have to. He continued to thwart Noonan's attempts to push past his resistance for another four hours and then he told him his plan.

"You can't be serious," Noonan extolled with an expression of shock.

"It's the only way," Joshua returned with insistence. "We don't have time for anything else."

"Only because you wasted it!" Noonan roared back at him.

"We're beyond arguing about this," Joshua returned in a firm voice.

"Okay!" Noonan reacted with a delivery of resignation. "But you can't ask this of those kids. Let me put a team together."

Joshua was shaking his head no even as Noonan was speaking.

"It has to be the gamers," Joshua uttered back.

"No, it doesn't," Noonan argued back. "We can do this."

"There's too much at stake," Joshua disputed glumly. "It has to be the gamers."

Noonan was at odds with this thinking, but he could tell from Joshua's demeanor that his mind was made up. With reluctance, he accepted this reality and watched as Joshua activated his computer and initiated a ship wide address.

"To the crew of the Orion, we are two hours out from time jump velocity. The UFP force pursuing us is forty-seven minutes out from lethal range. If something is not done to retard this advance, we will have no choice but to turn about and engage with them. There will be no place for us to hide in this battle. The Orion will likely sustain damage and there will be losses. How this conflict will end is unknown. But one thing is almost certain, at the conclusion of it the Orion will either be destroyed or unable to make the time jump. But I do have a plan—one that I believe will enable this spacecraft to make the time jump as scheduled."

Joshua paused after this last remark. He was hesitant to say what he needed to say next. At the end of a deep inhale and exhale he continued to speak.

"To work this plan, I will need six mow pilots."

Joshua paused once again. This delay was motivated by a feeling of sorrow for what he was asking of six of his crew. At the end of this time, he began to speak again.

"It’s my calculation that six mows, attacking behind a barrage of fire from Orion’s guns can buy us the time we need. Calculated into this plan is the factor that the six mow pilots must be gamers."

Joshua paused for the third time. He inhaled and exhaled visibly so. And then he began to speak again.

"The risk to these six pilots will be high—There is the possibility that none of the six will survive. But the success of this plan does not require that they do—The plan only requires that they impede the UFP force long enough for the Orion to escape.”

Joshua took in and let out a deep breath before speaking again.

“Without this gamble—this sacrifice—none of us will escape Sol space.”

Joshua paused again. At the end of this, he spoke his final words in this speech.

“I am calling for six volunteers—six gamers."

For what felt like a long three minutes there was silence. Joshua, Noonan and the crew of the Orion watched and waited for a response to appear on their respective computer monitors. Joshua was just about to speak again when a name appeared at the bottom of his video messenger window, Commander S. Beck. Joshua activated the call with a touch of his finger. A new live image of Sawyer popped onto the monitors throughout the basestar and split the screen with Joshua. Two seconds behind this Sawyer spoke in a solemn voice.

"I’ll do it."

"Thank you, Commander. Report to your mow. Your orders will be transmitted to you."

Joshua waited for Sawyer's image to disappear from the screen before speaking again.

"I need five more."

Joshua had just finished speaking when a second name appeared at the bottom of his video messenger window, LTJG O. Nehru. Joshua activated the name and a live image of Oscar appeared on the monitors alongside Joshua’s. A second behind his appearance Oscar spoke with resolution.

"I’m with Sawyer."

Joshua repeated to Oscar the instruction he gave to Sawyer. After this, he waited for the second image to disappear before speaking again.

“I need four more."

Over the next four minutes, Joshua repeated this act three times. Across this time, Lieutenants Gary Dixon, Nicholas Lazaro, and Roy Pappas volunteered for this mission. They were all gamers and they all displayed courage in their acceptance of the task. Another two minutes had passed behind the last volunteer before Joshua spoke again.

“I need one more volunteer.”

Another minute passed behind this and then a sixth name appeared at the bottom of Joshua’s video messenger window.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

When a live telecast of Admiral Sloan appeared on the computer monitors throughout the Orion a fear of what was to come filled Sawyer. He had his suspicion that the Admiral would act to resolve the situation they were in. He was not sure what that action would look like, and he had no idea why he and the other mow pilots were not allowed to engage with the UFP two hours earlier. But he had little doubt that the mows would have to contend with the UFP spacefighters now for the safety of the basestar. Verification of this intuition did not take long in coming. The crew of the Orion listened for two minutes as Joshua explained their situation and reported to them that he had a plan for managing it.

When Sloan announced that he needed six volunteers from among the gamers, Sawyer and the other gamers were stunned. They all knew that six mows had no chance against four hundred and fifty-seven spacefighters, even with gamers as their pilots. Everyone knew that six mows could do nothing more than delay the UFP long enough to allow the Orion to escape, and they all feared that the six, whoever they might be, would be sacrificed to save the basestar. Secretly they all prayed that someone else would volunteer.

Everyone knew that Joshua could not order anyone to perform this task. They were not soldiers in the traditional sense. They could not be arrested, charged with a crime and punished for disobeying an order. They were starcorp personnel under contract to perform a task. They could be subjected to financial penalties for failure to perform a reasonable request. But they were under no threat of arrest or financial penalties for choosing not to sacrifice themselves. They all knew what Admiral Sloan was asking had to be performed by a volunteer. But they also knew that if six did not come forward, they all would suffer for their absence.

No gamer aboard the Orion was more sensitive to the situation than Sawyer. As the wing commander, he felt an obligation to be a part of any action the mow pilots undertook. The lengthening silence that came after Joshua's speech germinated a thinking in him that he should lead by example. This was not an easy thought for him to entertain. Even while he was thinking it, Sawyer could not believe that he would volunteer for this. But his fears could not wash away his reasoning that all would suffer for the lack of action by six. Almost without his knowing it, Sawyer activated his computer and directed his video messenger to call Admiral Sloan. With near equal oblivion, he found himself volunteering to be one of the six.

"Sawyer," CC called across her computer monitor and through to his. "You know what he's asking?"

Sawyer had just started collecting himself for his journey to his mow when CC's video messenger call came in. She burst onto his screen with this inquiry an instant after he activated the connection. Before he could respond to it, his attention became diverted by the sight and sound of Oscar's exuberant offer to join with Sawyer on this mission.

"Oscar!" CC called out of reaction to his announcement.

Sawyer was quick to direct a video messenger conference call at Oscar. An instant after it was sent Oscar answered it. Sawyer commenced to plead with him as soon as he did.

"You don't have to do this."

"Too late,” Oscar dismissed cavalierly. “It's done."

"Neither one of you should do this," CC shouted out with a startled expression. "The risk is too great!"

"This is the final battle. I'm not going to sit on the sidelines for this," Oscar insisted.

While Oscar was speaking, Sawyer answered Marvin's video messenger call and linked him into the conference.

"I can't believe you're doing this," Marvin stated flatly and with a shake of his head.

"I'm the wing commander," Sawyer returned with an intonation of regret.

"You still don't have to do this," Marvin retorted with a stunned expression. “They can’t make you do this.”

"Someone has to do it," Sawyer returned.

"You're both crazy," CC cried out.

"We can't let someone else do it," Oscar countered with a look of surprise. “Then they’ll get the fame and glory.”

"Oh, grow up," CC yelled back. "This isn’t a video game. And I know you, Sawyer, this is just some feeling of duty."

"I can't back out now," Sawyer insisted somberly.

"Yes, you can!" CC exclaimed an instant behind.

Sawyer had no ready reply to this. After a momentary silence, he chose to end the conversation and start his journey to his mow. He said his good-byes and terminated his connection. Oscar followed his lead and did the same.

After these disconnections, CC and Marvin did not know what to say to each other. They both disconnected from the call without a word passed between them. There was no need for the video connection between them, they were both situated within the same space capsule. They glanced at each other from time to time, but neither could think of anything to say. During their silence, they watched as three more gamers volunteered for the task that Joshua had planned for them. After an additional two minutes without a new volunteer, they listened as Joshua made an appeal for a sixth gamer to come forward.

CC had no wish to be a part of this final battle. She knew that her reason for being a part of this entire expedition had more to do with stubbornness than anything else. She was not prepared to let her male friends relegate her into a protected class of citizenry. The very thought of this chafed at her like a dare from a detested competitor. But her feelings at this moment were entirely different. She felt no slight by Sawyer's and Oscar's gallant offer to be a part of this final endeavor. All that she felt at this moment was fear that they would not return from it. She could not imagine a way for them to get back aboard the basestar once they had left it. This was not a challenge. This was a sacrifice. And what she wanted more than anything was for her friends to not be a part of it. This feeling was especially strong with regards to Sawyer. With every second that ticked away in wait of a sixth volunteer her fear for Sawyer's safety grew. Suddenly, the thought of him going out with one less mow than what was planned became unbearable for her. And she acted, almost without thinking.

With a touch of her finger, CC directed a video conference call into Joshua’s ship wide connection. Joshua answered it a second later. Behind this, and after a brief inhale and exhale, CC spoke.

"I volunteer."

"Thank you, Lieutenant,” Joshua answered back. “Report to your mow. You’ll get your orders there."

Over the next two minutes, CC collected herself and tossed herself towards the space capsule door. All within her space capsule watched in silence as she floated by. She stopped at the door and looked back towards Marvin. He waved good-bye. She did the same in return, and then she left.


	39. Needs of the Many

Sawyer had not been in his mow for more than five minutes before receiving his orders. Admiral Sloan's instructions to him were simple. He and the other five mows were to engage the pursuing UFP for a minimum of seven minutes. When this occurred, they were to race back to the Orion ahead of the UFP spacefighters. The thinking, as Sawyer understood it, was for the mows to use their superior acceleration to outpace the spacefighters and catch up with the Orion, which should have attained time jump velocity by then. It was by his estimation a plan with multiple weak points. The first among these was the dependence upon the UFP spacefighters doing what they wanted them to do. The plan was also dependent upon the Orion escaping the grasp of the spacefighters and holding onto that separation for two hours. And lastly it was dependent upon a minimum of four of the mows surviving the engagement for the whole seven minutes. All these were less than likely outcomes by Sawyer's estimation. But even if these events did occur as the Admiral hoped Sawyer feared that there would not be enough time left for the six of them to escape with the Orion. The more he thought about this plan the more he dreaded volunteering to be a part of it.

What shocked Sawyer even more than the orders he received was the discovery that CC volunteered to be the sixth mow pilot. He first learned of this when she called over to him from her mow. She had just finished listening to Joshua's instructions when she did this. Her attempt to get Sawyer's thinking on Joshua’s plan of action was repeatedly thwarted by his pronounced declarations instructing her to not be there. To hide her fears, CC brushed away these statements with a consciously performed facade of nonchalance.

After ten minutes of pleading, and arguing, Sawyer came to an acceptance of CC's presence on the team. Oscar was far more accepting than he. He welcomed CC to the team with jubilant enthusiasm. He saw this joining as a return of the big three. This was the moniker he assigned to them during their video gaming days. The name signified the fact that the three of them were frequently in the top ten in scoring among all Physalia gamers.

Sawyer, CC, and Oscar, and the three other team members had nothing to do but talk for a further thirty minutes. All of them were dealing with growing feelings of distress because of the wait. At the end of this time, they were alerted that their deployment was imminent. All six of them tensed up in anticipation of this event. From inside of their mows, they could not hear the hum of the basestar's main thrusters or the absence of it when it shut down. Through their cockpit monitors, they could see one of the large docking bay doors open. They watched as the magnetic arms of the docking bay computer maneuvered them in front of the open portal. Through the opening, they could see streams of warheads, numbering in the tens of thousands, spewing out from the rail guns of the Orion and disappearing into the black of space behind them. When the barrage came to a stop, they watched themselves being forcibly expelled out of the docking bay an instant after the railguns of the Orion stopped firing.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

"Twenty-seven minutes to lethal range."

The report of the primary weapon system operator filled the crew capsule and resonated within the ears of all presence.

“We need to go faster,” Eckhart insisted.

Gruenberg responded to this with his usual indifference to stupid remarks.

“We're going as fast as we can.”

The tenor of Gruenberg’s reply fell too far below the level that Eckhart was willing to accept. His reliance on Gruenberg’s expertise notwithstanding, he needed his General to comprehend how important this point was to him. This urgency sparked him into rifling back a retort ahead of his possession of all the verbiage to express it.

“We can't let them—open this—this—time portal!”

“They’re not going fast enough for that yet,” Gruenberg reacted with a halfhearted reply.

“How can you be sure of that?” Eckhart challenged.

Gruenberg took note that the answer to this question required the input of some details. Because of this, he showed Eckhart some attention and provided a reply he believed to be suitable for a civilian.

“If your scientists are correct, Prime Minister, then they'll have to be moving twice as fast as they are right now, and probably a quarter more than that. They’re two hours away from those speeds.”

Eckhart had no reason to doubt this. He was briefed on the mechanics of the star-drive that the starcorps were most likely using. But this information did not stop him from being anxious about their situation.

“We shouldn't have let them get this far ahead of us,” Eckhart grumbled at no one in particular.

“They're not that far ahead, Prime Minister,” Gruenberg soothed. “They're not getting away.”

Gruenberg's command and control spacefighter was positioned at the back end of the UFP force that was pursuing the Orion Basestar. It was escorted by twenty spacefighters that were tasked to protect its occupants. The remaining four hundred and thirty-six spacefighters were clustered in front of them. Gruenberg had recalled them from their dispersal action and situated them in a mass formation. This he did to prepare them for an assault on the Orion.

After a further two minutes, the pilot reported that they had just crossed over into the sensor field of the Orion. This new situation had no effect on the operation of the force. The sensor field of the basestar told them that they were being tracked by the computers aboard the Orion. But this sensor field provided no assistance to the UFP spacefighters. The information it produced was accessible at the point of origin and nowhere else. The UFP spacefighters were still limited to visual observation and triangulation for their calculations on the distance between them and the basestar. Based upon this, they knew that they were another eighteen minutes away from enveloping the Orion within their own sensor field.

Gruenberg knew that he could have extended their sensor field to encompass the Orion at any time during the previous half hour. But he chose not to for the same reason that the Orion chose to reduce its sensor field to one-twentieth of its previous size—power. The sensor field was too great of a drain on the power supply of spaceships. Gruenberg wanted to catch up with the Orion as quickly as possible. To do this, he directed as much power to the main thrusters as the reactors of the spacefighters could spare.

"Twenty-three minutes to lethal range."

The primary weapon system operator bellowed out his report. There was no response. They all were in wait for that moment when they would be close enough to overwhelm the defensive systems of the basestar with their weapons. Six minutes into this wait the primary weapon system operator bellowed out a new report.

"Entering target vessel's lethal range in one minute."

With a shouted command, Gruenberg opened a fleet-wide voice and video communication channel. This sudden reaction took Eckhart by surprise. He had no idea what was happening. The only thing that stopped him from expressing his confusion in the form of a question was the speed at which this was happening. He had every reason to believe that the answer to his question was soon to be answered without his asking it.

"All spacefighters, initiate your DED Systems."

This command did little to dispel Eckhart's confusion. He understood that the DED was the directed energy defense system that all the spacefighters were equipped with. And he knew that this system, once it was initiated, would fire on any threat to the vessel of its own accord. What he did not understand was Gruenberg's reason for putting the armada in this defensive posture. Keeping the directed energy weapon system charged and at the ready was a power drain, although it was of no great significance.

"What's happening?" Eckhart inquired of his General.

"We've gotten close enough to the warship to be fired upon," Wilkinson explained on Gruenberg's behalf.

"Then why aren't we shooting at them?" Eckhart questioned in an insistent tone.

Wilkinson took it upon himself to explain their situation to Eckhart.

"We are falling towards the warship and they are falling away from us. This means that the travel time of a railgun barrage from them will be significantly shorter than ours. Right now, the flight time of a barrage would be about fifteen seconds for us and five for them. That warship could commence firing on us at any time now."

"And you think it will do this?" Eckhart questioned Gruenberg with a tinge of anger in his voice.

"I would," Gruenberg returned impassively.

Gruenberg's declaration did not take long to come to pass. Nearly two minutes behind his words thousands of warheads began piercing the boundary of their sensor fields. Within seconds of this occurring, the directed energy defensive systems of the spacefighters began diminishing their number. On the forward display monitor, the animation of these destructions seemed insignificant when compared to the large number of warheads streaming across the distances between the boundary of the sensor field and its point of origin. It took less than three seconds for the warheads to cross the distance. The overwhelming majority of these warheads flew by doing no damage. The maneuvering thrusters of the spacefighters pushed the vessels up, down, left, and right so that they might slip between the projectiles that flew by them like a hailstorm. The combination of these two defensive measures served the large majority of the spacefighters well. By the end of this barrage, sixty seconds later, more than one-hundred thousand warheads were launched and thirty-two spacefighters were destroyed or damaged. Gruenberg’s command and control spacefighter passed through it unscathed.

“Fighters! Six of them!”

The shrieking report from the sensor field operator reflected his surprise. His attention, like the attentions of all others inside the command and control spacefighter, was fixed on the task of avoiding the storm of warheads. The appearance of six mows took them all by surprise. The DED system was the one element of the force of spacefighters that attended to them without hesitation. However, unlike the warheads, the mows had shielding and countermeasures to help them endure directed energy beams for a prolonged span of time. When the occupants of the UFP spacefighters came around to taking note of them, they were near to point blank range with the leading edge of the UFP spacefighters. The flight time from launch to impact was half of a second.

“Evade! Evade!” Gruenberg yelled towards his crew. “All fighters, evade!”

In the time, it took Gruenberg to finish this command a dozen spacefighters had been dispatched by the six mows that was plunging into their formation. Up, down and lateral movements were insufficient for evading this assault. The UFP spacefighters had to show their tails for this action. Only their aft primary thrusters were powerful enough to push them out of the kill zone of the mows quick enough and far enough to escape. Moving before the mow commenced to fire at them was their only chance for survival. For most within these kill zones survival was a matter of luck. The mow chose to fire at one or more of the other spacefighters before turning its attention towards them. This gave them the space of time they needed to get away. 

The mows penetrated the formation of UFP spacefighters for two minutes. Unlike the barrage from the Orion, they did not do a quick pass through their ranks. The mows slowed their descent so that they could engage with the UFP. They separated out into six different directions so that they could contend with all sectors of the UFP formation. By the time that these two minutes had passed an additional forty-four UFP spacefighters were destroyed or rendered inoperable, and the remainder were breaking and turning to escape the lethal fire of six mows.

The advantage of surprise was gone by the end of this time. The UFP spacefighters were dispersed and most were well out of point-blank range. The contest turned about to the advantage of the spacefighters and their overwhelming numbers. They began to press the fight. The six mows ducked and dodged amidst the swarming UFP spacefighters. It took just under three minutes for the first mow to be destroyed by a hail of projectiles from multiple directions. It was shredded into pieces by more than a dozen warheads. It took another two minutes for a second mow to fall victim to the crowd of spacefighters targeting from all sides. It was at this moment that the progression of the battle turned again.

"Colonel Trujillo, breakaway now," Gruenberg yelled into the microphone fixed into his monitor. "You and your wing with me."

Gruenberg's command and control spacefighter spent the whole of the past seven minutes trying to stay clear of the lethal fire coming from the six Orion spacefighters. The entry of the six mows into their formation produced a havoc that washed through their numbers across a span of thirty seconds. Their own momentum was the cause of their greatest peril. The mows fell through their ranks at a pace just slow enough to give them the time they needed to target every spacefighter within it, one after the other. The entire force was effectively a collection of moving targets falling towards half a dozen floating, heavily-armed, rapid-firing, quick draw gunships. The UFP spacefighters did not have the speed to contend with the mows in such close quarters and with such little time to react. There was not enough time to do anything but scatter. From a god’s eye view, the spacefighters appeared to roil about like a thin flake of smoke colliding with a soft squirt of air.

“What are you going to do?” Eckhart yelled at his General.

Gruenberg ignored the inquiry. He was too busy giving orders to entertain the question.

“Set a course for that warship, best possible speed.”

Gruenberg followed this command with orders to the remaining portion of his force.

“When you’ve destroyed those starcorp spacefighters come to me.”

“How much time did we lose?” Eckhart questioned loudly.

Gruenberg was reluctant to answer that question even if he did know the answer, which he did not. He knew that the basestar had bought itself a large chunk of time with this tactic. What he did not know was if it was enough to enable it to escape.

“Too much,” Gruenberg grumble back after a time.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Joshua Sloan and his commanders had spent three-quarters of an hour following the approach of the UFP force. At the start of this time, the six pilots had just gotten situated in their mows. There was little said between Joshua and his command and control capsule crew over this span of time, and there was little more to do. The primary thrusters of the Orion were doing all that needed to be done. All present inside the command and control space-capsule knew what was about to happen. They were all well versed on what they had to do. The tension inside the command capsule of the Orion grew with each passing minute. None there knew how this action would play out. But they all knew that this would be their last engagement, one way or the other.

By this time, it was known to all that they were seconds away from this final engagement. But the number of seconds that was separating them from this event was unknown to all but Joshua. The crew’s confusion was due to the entry of the UFP space force into their sensor field. This it did several minutes earlier. It passed into lethal range of their railguns two minutes earlier. At this moment, the only thing that was preventing the Orion from firing its guns at the UFP spacefighters was an order from Joshua.

Joshua was aware that his Command Capsule crew was waiting for an order from him to commence firing. But his worry now was for the mistake of giving this order too soon. He knew that they had a time advantage over the UFP spacefighters. They would not reach the desired five-second projectile flight time range for another five minutes. By this time, he knew that the flight time of their projectiles would be just under two seconds. Using this advantage to its maximum benefit was something he was eager to exploit.

On top of this, Joshua had a second worry. He did not want to wait too long. If the UFP began their barrage before them, then the weight of Orion’s counter would be abbreviated by the need to enact defensive measures. He weighed these two concerns against each other as he watched the time tick by. When the clock closed towards the final sixty seconds, Joshua concluded that he dared not wait any longer.

With a sudden outburst of words Joshua ordered the shutdown of the primary thrusters, the opening of the docking bay doors, the deployment and charging of the bottom-side railguns, the activation of the targeting computer and the firing of all weapons, in that order. It took eight seconds for all these commands to be enacted. After the passage of sixty seconds, he ordered the barrage stopped and the retraction of all railguns. An instant behind this he ordered the launch of the six mows. These three acts took little more than two seconds to complete. The closing of the docking bay door cost them an additional five. When the last of these orders was completed Joshua restarted the primary repulsor engines and returned the Orion to maximum acceleration. The command capsule went silent as all watched the battle between the six mows and the UFP force fall away into the distance.

“They’re coming,” the sensor operator reported to Joshua at a shout.

The Orion had been falling away from their encounter with the UFP space force for thirteen minutes when the report or pursuing spacefighters was announced. They were far beyond the range of the meager sensor field that the Orion was projecting, but a continuing visual scan of the area provided an imprecise understanding of their disposition. This method was the means behind the sensor operator’s report.

“How much time do we have?” Joshua yelled out.

“Unknown, Admiral.”

“A guess, a range, anything…”

“Admiral, there’s no way of knowing.”

This answer did not come as a surprise to Joshua. He was aware of the limitations of measurements in space that were based on any means other than sensor field technology. Radar was next to useless at detecting stealthy vessels across the great distances of space. Visual observation was a better alternative, but it had its limitations, as well. Military spaceships were stealthy by design. This also made them difficult to be seen visually across a thousand miles of space. This was especially true when its commander chose not to emit any light. With their thrusters operating it was possible to see the glow of the engines from a distance. But this information said nothing about its location and movement. Without an enveloping sensor field, triangulation was the only means for turning visual observations into calculated measurements of distance and speed.

“Can you tell me how many?” Joshua asked his sensor operator.

“Negative, more than a few, but not all.”

Joshua took a moment to consider this reply and then vocalized the summation of his rumination to no one in particular.

“That means that the mows, or some of them, must still be fighting.”

“For now,” Noonan grumbled towards Joshua in particular.

The situation that provoked Noonan’s barbed remark was apparent to all. The divide of the UFP force was a strong indicator that this event was not going to go the way that they hoped. One likely outcome was that the six mow pilots would not make it back to the Orion ahead of this breakaway UFP group. Despite this anticipated tragedy all knew that this was the least of their worries. Most thought the six pilots were doomed from the instant they left the basestar. The others held onto the hope that Admiral Sloan had a plan to get them back aboard. These two positions notwithstanding, all knew that the six were expendable to the cause of preventing a greater tragedy, the destruction or capture of the basestar. It was understood by everyone that this breakaway UFP group could not be allowed to get within lethal range of the Orion.

The crew of the Orion Command Capsule followed the approach of the UFP breakaway group for another ninety-one minutes. Periodic reports from the sensor field operator advised all that the visual of the group was growing ever more pronounced. The last report, five minutes earlier, estimated their number at more than one-hundred and less than two. By this time, these reports were being taken in by the crew with a modicum of interest.

“Admiral, we are at time jump velocity,” the pilot announced with enthusiasm.

The Command Capsule crew of the Orion took in this report with a nearly inaudible gasp of relief. They all had been counting the minutes to this moment. This was their escape window. It was the culmination of all that they had done up until that moment. An expression of release spread through the capsule like a wave of energy. Ten seconds later their demeanors changed into looks of concern. They had done the math and gauged the consequence of initiating a time jump at this moment. The six mow pilots would be lost to them across four light-years of space. This thought held all but one of them locked in a cogitation regarding the merits and morality of staying and going.

Joshua had no thoughts on the pros and cons of staying and leaving. He had considered this situation long before this moment and decided how he had to act. His analysis of this dilemma brought him to the realization that his feelings would not serve him well in this. With this thinking in mind, he was prepared to act with speed and without sentiment at the moment it needed to be done. He believed this was that time.

“Prepare to start transmitting telemetry,” Joshua ordered after a second of hesitation.

“Admiral,” Noonan pleaded out behind an expression of disbelief. “You can’t do this.”

The crew of the Orion command and control capsule froze in their chairs in reaction to Noonan’s assertion. Joshua gave his Commander a moment of thought before responding to his entreaty with a concise response.

“Yes, I can. Transmit.”

The communication officer initiated the transmission after a slight hesitation. A minute of silent contemplation followed behind this act. At the back end of this, the Command Capsule crew began peeking at Joshua for a sign that he was about to give the order to open a time portal. With each passing minute, these looks and glances became more numerous. They all knew that time was not on their side. They worried about the approach of the UFP spacefighters. They knew that if they waited one minute too long, they would lose the opportunity. All of them by then had by then given up on the hope that the six mow pilots could catch up with them. Time was too short, and they had yet to receive a transmission from them that detailed their status. They all feared that the six were dead, Joshua included.

“Sensor field contact! We’ve just been enveloped by the enemy’s sensor field.”

This sudden alert came from the weapon systems operator. A sensation of shock spiked inside the crew. The presence of the enemy’s sensor field told them that they were being targeted. Joshua suspected that this UFP splinter group was not far behind them. It made sense to him that the commander of that force would expend as little energy as necessary on a sensor field. Less than a minute later, this suspicion was confirmed when the UFP spacefighters began appearing on the sensor field monitors of the Orion.

"Shutdown the engines and the sensor field generator. Divert all available power to the temporal field generator."

Joshua shouted out these orders two seconds after seeing the first UFP spacefighter on the capsule’s sensor field monitor. This information told him that a railgun projectile fired from this splinter group had a fifteen second flight time from that spaceship to his. Normally this would have given the basestar’s targeting computer plenty of time to fend off a barrage. But Joshua learned from practice that he needed an eight-second window to perform the jump. And for the whole of this time, the sensor field had to be down.

"Engage temporal field generator," Joshua commanded after hearing that his previous orders had been completed.

An instant behind this command all images on the external monitors transformed into static. For three seconds after this, there was nothing but silence. At the end of this time, the pilot gave his report.

“Admiral, we have crossed into null space/time.”

Joshua took this report with a soft sigh of relief. Three seconds later he took in a different report from Commander Noonan.

"The devil is going to dig a special pit in hell just for you, Admiral."

“Yeah, I know,” Joshua whispered back.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Gruenberg was ninety minutes into his pursuit of the starcorp basestar. The distant glow of its primary thrusters was the only means that he used to steer his command towards it. But tracking it was not difficult. The basestar made no turns or deviations off its trajectory. The newly commenced emission of a coded radio transmission from it made this task even easier. Gruenberg believed this to be a recall order for the six starcorp spacefighters. He surmised from this that the basestar was nearing the velocity it needed to open a time portal.

“Extend sensor fields by ten percent,” Gruenberg called out to his command across their communication link.

Gruenberg calculated that his force was thirty minutes away from the lethal firing range, at the most. But it was his fear that the basestar was less distant from opening a time portal. Because of these estimations, he was eager to know exactly how far away the basestar was and how fast it was going.

“The starcorp warship is still not on our monitors,” the sensor field operator reported.

Gruenberg took a moment to consider this report and then he called out a new order.

“Have all fighters in the wing go to one-hundred and ten on their reactors.”

In Gruenberg’s mind, this was a gamble, but it was one he felt they had to take. If allowed to continue operating at this level, the reactors in his spacefighters would start going critical in another twenty minutes, more or less. When this happened, the spacefighters would have to reduce their power production by one-third to bring them down to a safe level, rapidly. Despite the consequence of this, Gruenberg’s thinking told him that speed was more important than endurance. He believed that he had to have that basestar within lethal range of his guns well before the end of this time. It took a little more than three minutes for Gruenberg’s gamble to pay off.

“Contact!” The sensor operator shouted with excitement. “Our forward spacefighters have just enveloped the warship.”

“How long before we’re in lethal range?” Gruenberg shouted back at the young officer.

The young officer reported that they were three minutes away from a five second flight time for their railgun projectiles, at maximum muzzle velocity. He roughly calculated that they were at a twenty-second flight time at their present distance. This information gave Gruenberg cause for hope. But the report he was not hearing was inducing the opposite effect. They had yet to enter the basestar’s sensor field. Gruenberg had been advised that the act of dropping the sensor field was a likely first step before opening a time portal. His thinking at this moment was that the basestar was minutes, if not seconds, away from diving into null space/time. This thinking had him weighing the options of commencing their barrage at that very moment or waiting a little longer. After a second of thought, he chose to wait. A dozen seconds behind this decision a new report came in.

“Contact!” The sensor field operator yelled out. “We’ve just entered the warship’s sensor field.”

Gruenberg had no immediate reaction for this. He knew there was no chance of striking the basestar with a projectile at that distance. Its defensive system would destroy them all halfway through their flight time. But he feared doing nothing might cost him the only chance he would have. In the time it would take for his force to close the distance, the basestar might dive into null space/time. Because of this indecision, he took two seconds to weigh each option against the other. For Eckhart, this was a second and a half too long.

“What’s happening? What’s wrong?”

Gruenberg gave no thought to this inquiry while he considered his choices. At the end of his two seconds of contemplation, he shouted out his decision in the form of commands.

“All ships shut down your engines. Channel all available power to the primary weapon. Target enemy vessel and fire at will—continuous fire—fire now! Fire now!”

It took little more than three seconds for the first projectile to exit the opening of a railgun. In half that time, a new event was coming into the awareness of the crews of the UFP force.

“General, it’s gone! The sensor field is… The enemy warship has shut down its sensor field.”

Gruenberg noted the report from the sensor station operator. But he gave no response. He knew there was nothing to do but wait and watch as the barrage of warheads continued to spew out of the rail guns from one-hundred and twenty-two UFP spacefighters. Nine seconds into this torrential fusillade the avatar of the starcorp basestar disappeared from the sensor field monitor. For the next ten seconds, there was silence.

“What just happened?”

Eckhart articulated his question with an inflection of disbelief. He had a strong suspicion about what just happened. But it was his hope that someone would tell him something different.

“It’s gone,” the sensor station operator reported with a hint of amazement in his voice. “It just disappeared.”

There was no need for a definition of word disappeared in this instance. They all knew that this sudden disappearance meant that the basestar had made its escape into null space/time. This conclusion was supported by a pulse of electromagnetic radiation that seemed to originate from the basestar’s last known position. All but one inside the UFP command and control spacefighter was awed by this event. Eckhart, to the contrary, was seething with anger. After taking several seconds to fume over this turn of events, Eckhart looked at Gruenberg and said the only thing he could think to say.

“What now?”

“Prime Minister, they’re gone,” General Gruenberg explained with a dejected look and a shake of his head. “We lost them.”

“I can see that, damn it! How do we find them? How do we catch them?”

To include his ministers into this discussion, Eckhart panned about and scanned their faces as he spoke.

“Prime Minister,” Wilkinson spoke up tentatively, “we don’t have that technology yet. It will take years, possibly decades to figure out how they did that.”

“We have scientists! We have engineers, don’t we?” Eckhart railed back at his Minister of Defense with ferocity. “I want to know how they did it! I want spaceships that can do this, and I want this done now. Somebody has got to know how they did this. Find them!”

The intensity of Eckhart’s rage had the attention of all present, but few were willing to look at him. Carr had elected to remain out of the path his wrath up until this moment. Out of fear of bringing up what he knew needed to be said, the Minister of State spoke his words gently.

“Prime Minister, we have bigger concerns right now. There’s going to be some political fallout over this.”

Carr paused to see if Eckhart was comprehending where he was going with this. He noted the seething anger that appeared to be expanding within him, interpreted this as evidence that he did understand where this was going and went on with his message.

“We have thousands of dead and nothing to show for it that we could not have acquired by doing nothing.”

Carr paused again and waited to see if Eckhart wanted to respond to this. He continued with his talk after a two-second delay.

“There is a growing rumor on Earth that you knew what the starcorps were going to do before we left.”

Carr paused again to give weight to this last remark, and then he continued.

“Reports of our losses are being continuously tallied on Earth. Your favorability rating is falling by the hour, Prime Minister. This is a problem that we have to start looking at.”

The muscles in Eckhart’s jaw began to flex as he ground his teeth. His stare towards Carr appeared to be looking straight through him. This and his continued silence told Carr that he was getting the message. To assure himself that he had successfully conveyed the size of this problem, Carr finished his elucidation with one final remark.

“There’s talk of impeachment.”

This news fed into Eckhart’s fury with a ferocity. The idea that this failure was causing a political downfall for him added to the rage the success of the starcorps produced. Through a long pause of silence, he said and did nothing. His eyes maintained a fixed stare into the air in front of him. The tension in his body constrained his desire to go into a physical temper tantrum. All present waited for his reaction and instructions. After a short time, the communications officer was distracted from this vigil by a transmission coming through his headphone. The officer took several seconds to take in the communication. At the end of this time, the officer looked to General Gruenberg and reported.

“General, Captain McLaughlin, and his wing are still engaged with four starcorp spacefighters. He requests instructions on how to proceed.”

This report captured the attention of Eckhart, much to the note of the Gruenberg. Without saying a word, Gruenberg passed the question on to Eckhart with a look. He, in turn, responded to it with a softly spoken command.

“General, get us back there.”


	40. Plight of the Few

"Engage! Engage! Engage!”

Sawyer yelled out this command an instant after the computer alerted him that his mow’s deflector was being overwhelmed by half a dozen particle beams. In that same instant, he triggered the deployment of countermeasures and dodged to the left and down. The mow automatically launched a spread of twelve warheads that detonated a half second after leaving the vessel. The resulting radiation produced a static shroud on the sensor screens of the UFP spacefighters. This provided a temporary hiding place for Sawyer’s mow. In that same instance, he slipped his mow beneath the particle beams that were overloading its deflectors. In the next instant, he transitioned his mow into combat configuration with an outward flip of his right hand and began firing streams of projectiles at every UFP spacefighter within lethal range of him, one after the other. He did not have time to note the proficiency of his shooting. The targets were far too numerous to devote any time to a kill confirmation. This situation only allowed him to fire a brief volley at a target before moving on to the next.

“Spread out! Spread out!”

Sawyer and his wing of five had just started their engagement with the four hundred and fifty-seven spacefighters that were pursuing the Orion Basestar. As planned, they moved into the enemy formation along six different paths. Their railguns spewed out short bursts of projectiles at a different target on the average of one per second. The UFP spacefighters that were not in full retreat were always first on the list. It was understood by all six mow pilots that the casualties they inflicted upon the UFP in the initial part of this engagement was critical to the success of the mission. There was no time for communication between the mow pilots while they did this. Events were moving too quickly. They all knew what they had to do and how quickly it had to be done.

For Sawyer and the five members of his wing, this effort appeared to be going as planned. The abruptness of their attack at such close range had the occupants of the UFP spacefighters devoting all their efforts to fleeing the lethal barrage that was spewing from the mows. All about the mows the UFP spacefighters had the back end of their spaceships turned towards them and their main thrusters were operating at full burn. The particle beam assaults from the UFP spacefighters came to a stop almost immediately. It was, for the moment, a one-sided battle.

It took little more than two minutes for the initial phase of this engagement to end. By this time, the swarm of UFP spacefighters were turning the nose of their spaceships back towards the six mows and using their primary thrusters to retard their fall away from them. As this was happening, they began targeting their railguns at them. Without the sensor field of the Orion to aid them the mows could not see the whole battle space. Using their individual sensor fields, they were able to see beyond their lethal range by one-fourth. Much of what the UFP spacefighters were doing was happening just beyond this distance. The counterattack came in from all directions.

It took a dozen seconds for Sawyer and his wing to become nearly overwhelmed by the onslaught of projectiles that began streaking in from all directions. Within that time, they went from offensive to defensive. Evading the hailstorm of warheads was the only thing they had time to do. Their railguns went silent.

“Sawyer! It’s getting hot in here.”

“I’m getting squeezed hard.”

“There’s too many. I’m totally defensive.”

Sawyer recognized the voices of Oscar and CC as the first and third speakers across this open channel. His mow’s computer provided him with the means to note the general direction that the call was coming from. But without the Orion, he did not have the means to know more than that in short order. He was too busy twisting and turning, zigging and zagging to track any transmission to its point of origin. The number of UFP spacefighters within his field of view doubled over the next minute.

“I’m hit! I’m…”

The transmission from the mow pilot terminated in mid-sentence. Sawyer could tell from the tenor of the voice that the transmission did not come from CC or Oscar. Despite this recognition, he did not have the time to experience any relief from this. More than two-dozen UFP spacefighters were trying to kill him with their crisscrossing fire. The greatest asset in his defense at this moment was the fact that the transit time of their volleys were just under five seconds.

“Four more minutes,” Sawyer yelled out to his wing.

The one thing that Sawyer was keeping an eye on, other than the enemy fighters around him, was the clock. He was under orders to keep this UFP force engaged with them for seven minutes. This was a time frame that terrified him given their mismatched numbers. But it was his fear of being seen running from it that held him to the fight.

In Sawyer’s mind, the next four minutes seemed to slip by in slow motion. His attention to the job of surviving the battle made every action he took an event unto itself. Every volley that he evaded became a chapter in the story of this engagement. Despite this fixation, he followed the passage of time in seemingly one-second increments. When the last second of their seven-minute clock expired, Sawyer reacted.

“Break off! Break off! Break off!”

Sawyer needed to say no more than that to communicate to the wing that they needed to break away from this engagement. In that same instance, Sawyer transitioned out of combat mode with a wave of his arms in the form of an outside in U gesture. His mow, promptly, collapsed back into its seed shell shape. A second behind this Sawyer began steering his mow through the swarm of UFP spacefighters and towards the empty space beyond. This was not a straight path. The distance between Sawyer and the empty space was interspersed with enemy spacefighters and streams of projectiles streaking through the locations where his mow was expected to be in the next one to two seconds. Despite these dangers, the act of thrusting past these barrages and the vessels that launched them was a relief. It was no longer necessary for him to remain fixed in the midst of them. He was free to race away from the threats to his mow and his self. 

It took near to a minute for Sawyer to negotiate his way out of the kill box he was in. The sight of the UFP spacefighters falling in line behind him was a comfort. His mow was faster than their spaceplanes. As he extended the distance between them, dodging their projectiles got easier. This was so because the UFP were, primarily, at his rear. He needed only to make minor up and down, left and right movements to slip between their volleys. The crisscrossing fire from all directions shortly became a thing of the past. Another two minutes later the UFP spacefighters discontinued their volleys. Sawyer was too far ahead and had too much time to nudge out of the way of these barrages. The best the UFP spacefighters could do was follow him.

“Who’s there? Comeback!”

Sawyer yelled this question into an open radio transmission for his wing to hear. He had no way of knowing which among them had survived, if any. Normally his mow could discern their sensor fields, but they were too far apart for their fields to overlap. Because of this disconnection, Sawyer had to resort to a role call to determine who among his wing was still alive.

“Oscar here! I’m with you, Commander.”

“Lieutenant Lazaro reporting.”

Sawyer heard these two reports in rapid succession. Behind them, there was silence. Over the course of this quiet, he waited for the report that he most wanted to hear. At the end of his patience, he verbally reacted to its absence.

“CC?”

“I’m here! I’m here, Sawyer!” CC screamed back across the radio connection three seconds later. “I can’t get away. I—I… They’re all around me. I can’t get out!”

CC was dancing about in her zero-gravity control cockpit with a skill that looked to be a mixture of gymnast and ballerina. Evasive maneuvers were her strength. In the arcade games, her ability to survive a conflict was rivaled by three others. Sawyer was one of the three. Where she fell short of Sawyer and Oscar was in her offensive skill. Her kill numbers were seldom the equal of Oscar’s and even less so to Sawyer’s. Despite this deficiency, she almost always stayed around long enough to outpoint the overwhelming majority of Physalia game players. But the contest she was in at this moment was not a game. The objective at this moment was to get away from the three-dozen enemy spacefighters that were all around her. And on average their number was increasing by one every fifteen seconds.

Sawyer was quick to shut down his main thruster and spin his mow about in the direction that her transmission came from. He opened a display window and began scanning a magnified image of that area of space. As he did this, he yelled encouragements to CC to hang on. He was ten seconds into this when a transmission from Oscar came into his mow.

“I see you, CC! I’m coming!”

The sensation of hope leaped up into Sawyer’s thinking. Oscar’s response made him believe that there was a chance for CC. Three seconds later he noted movement in the distant space. A large group of UFP spacefighters were making identical bends in their trajectories. It took Sawyer another two seconds to find the mow that they were pursuing. An instant behind this he began scanning the area of space that they were likely moving into. He began expanding and dropping away enlarged visages of the area, one after the other, in rapid succession. After five seconds of this, he came to a stop on an image that caught his attention. A swarm of UFP spacefighters appeared to be concentrating on something within their midst.

“I’m completely defensive, Oscar. Hurry!”

“I’m coming, CC! Just hang on, I’ll be there in two minutes.”

Sawyer could see that Oscar was telling the truth. It would take him two minutes. He could also tell that Oscar was far closer to CC than him. Nonetheless, he oriented his mow for the turn and fired his primary thruster at full blast. His pursuers adjusted their trajectory to intercept him.

Oscar’s turn towards CC brought him well within the lethal range of his pursuers. For much of the first minute, he had to navigate through a gauntlet of fire from them. This he did with relative ease. When he was better than five seconds distant from their railgun projectiles, he straightened out his course, applied maximum thrust and then left the protection of the mow to his directed energy defense system. One minute later Oscar was in combat configuration and falling through a large section of CC’s beleaguers.

“This way, CC,” Oscar called out as he dealt out short volleys from his railguns at one target after another.

Oscar’s mow popped up on CC’s monitor a second before he began speaking these words. Their sensor fields had overlapped. Their computers were talking to each other. She was quick to take notice that the sector Oscar was falling through suddenly stopped firing at her. She also noted that two UFP spacefighters in this area winked red and then disappeared from her screen in rapid succession. CC had no doubt that this was the work of Oscar. The relief that Oscar’s action provided enabled her to get a hit on one of the spacefighters in the opposite direction. The target continued to register on her monitor, but it clearly flashed red and did a sudden veer off its trajectory. Instinctively she began to favor the area that Oscar was in for her way out. She intermittently initiated short blasts of thrust in between ducking and dodging fire from UFP spacefighters in other areas. Gradually her momentum increased as her mow fell towards the opening.

“You’re not going to make it,” Oscar insisted at a shout.

“Yes, I will,” CC countered with an inflection of defiance.

“No, you’re not,” Oscar argued back. “Not without my help.”

“Don’t you wait for me,” CC yelled back.

“I’ve got you covered,” Oscar returned with a cavalier flair.

“Don’t do it, Oscar. I can make it.”

“It’s already done. Just keep coming.”

Oscar’s pass across CC’s escape route was too fast to keep the UFP spacefighters there preoccupied for more than a minute. This was less time than CC needed to make an easy breakout. But this was the ideal pace for Oscar. It made him a difficult target for the UFP spacefighters in front of him and too distant for the space fighters behind. CC knew that he could not be of any further assistance to her without making a significant reduction in his rate of fall. This was a gamble she had seen Oscar take dozens of times in the arcade games, and often it played out to everyone’s advantage. But this was not a game. CC feared to see him take this risk. This fear was doubly intense because she knew he would be doing it for her.

“I don’t need your help!”

CC’s claim was not false bravado. She knew that the risk of racing past the collection of spacefighters in front of her would be just as great as the one that Oscar was taking. But she had greater confidence in her ability to evade enemy fire than she had in his.

“It’s already done. Come on, the door is open. Let’s blow this solar system.”

CC could see that Oscar’s claim was true. In the area where he was located, the UFP spacefighters were all in disarray. He had clearly slowed to lengthen his period of passage. The UFP spacefighters around him were scurrying to get out from under his guns. A second after Oscar had spoken, a third UFP spacefighter disappeared off the screen. CC knew that there was no undoing what Oscar had done. She began to corkscrew her way around the fire coming from behind and the sides as she thrust into this area. When she reached the open space on the other side, CC chanced a look back towards Oscar.

“Oscar, get out of there!” CC screamed at him with an intonation of terror.

CC could see on her monitor that three separate swarms of UFP spacefighters were converging towards Oscar. The two groups along his flanks were the spacefighters that had been concentrating on her. Now that they had eluded Oscar’s charge into their midst they were starting to focus their attentions on him. He was easily within lethal range of their railguns, and his greatly reduced speed made him a better target than CC. But these two groups were not the ones that CC was worried about the most.

The UFP spacefighters that Oscar had just punched his way into were just starting to build up momentum and task their vessels onto him. She knew that Oscar would outpace them in short order, assuming he managed to evade their fire. It was the group pursuing Oscar from behind that had CC worried. They were moving at twice his speed and closing on him fast. She knew that they would be a hard target for him, and he would be an easier one for them.

“I got this. Get out of here,” Oscar yelled back across their sensor field connection.

CC knew that she could not get to Oscar quick enough to provide any assistance. Her fall had her on a vector that was greater than ninety degrees off from his. This hindrance notwithstanding, she felt compelled to stay in the vicinity. She had just begun the act of reorienting her mow for a thruster burn onto a new trajectory when Sawyer’s sensor field linked up with hers.

“CC, are you okay?” Sawyer called out.

“I’m fine. But Oscar, he’s in danger.”

Sawyer’s monitor lit up with all of CC’s data the instant their sensor fields touched. This included the data that was being fed to her by Oscar’s connection at the opposite side of her sensor sphere. It took Sawyer two seconds to assess the danger Oscar was in and to formulate a plan to help him out of it.

“I’ll help Oscar,” Sawyer advised. “You get out of here.”

Sawyer could see that CC was in no position to be of much help to Oscar. This was all the excuse he needed to order her out of the area. His plan was to continue past her and attack the group of UFP spacefighters that were closing on Oscar from behind. He knew that he could bring fire to bear on them in a fraction of the time that it would take CC to turn about and do the same. This was true because his trajectory had him already falling in that general direction and at a very high speed.

“I’m not going without Oscar,” CC countermanded.

Sawyer took a moment to consider a response to this.

“Hey, Sawyer,” Oscar called out in this moment of silence. “Welcome to the party.”

“Oscar,” Sawyer bellowed with a quick turn of attention his way. “You need to get out of there. You’ve got a mess of trouble racing up your six.”

“I see them,” Oscar retorted with his usual cavalier manner. “So, are you going to help, or what?”

“I’ll be there in twenty,” Sawyer returned as he made a slight adjustment to his trajectory.

Oscar gave little thought to the perils of this situation or to any that he had been in before this. His mind did not dwell on the possibility of harm or death. For him, life was an adventure. He was generally too preoccupied with living the adventure to dwell on the perils. All concerns were pushed aside in favor of this fascination with life. This was his gift and his curse. It made him fearless, and it made him reckless. Winning was a fixation. Losing was not a consideration.

This was an easy mindset for Oscar to maintain at this moment. He had been in similar and worst situations in the Physalia Arcade Game. Eighty percent of the time he successfully maneuvered his way out. He was confident that he would do the same here, and Sawyer’s twenty-second promise gave him reason to be even more so.

For the next ten seconds, Oscar dodged the fire coming from the spacefighters along his flanks with relative ease. He returned fire on numerous occasions. With short blasts of thrusts, he intermittently nudged his mow to an ever-greater speed down the trajectory he was on. Sawyer was ten-seconds out from assisting Oscar when the spacefighters behind him streaked into lethal range. As they began to fall past Oscar, the spacefighters shut down their engines and oriented the point of their spaceplanes and railguns at him. This took little more than a second. An instant behind this they began to fire. Three seconds later Oscar’s situation went from manageable to intolerable.

“Hey Sawyer, it’s getting a little thick in here,” Oscar yelled out to his friend and wing commander.

“I’ll be there in five,” Sawyer yelled back. “Just hold on.”

“Roger that,” Oscar returned with jaunty delivery. “I’ll be right… I’m hit! I’m hit!”

The tail end of Oscar’s message resonated in Sawyer’s cockpit with the strong intonation of alarm.

“I’m coming, Oscar! I’m coming!” Sawyer screamed back.

Before Sawyer could finish speaking, Oscar yelled out his final message.

“I’m hit again! Sawyer, I’m spinning…”

“Oscar!” Sawyer screamed at his monitor.

Sawyer watched as the avatar of Oscar’s mow broke apart in his display. He could see avatars of the UFP spacefighters that were responsible for its destruction. A rage boiled up inside of him as he dealt with the reality that he had just lost his best friend. For several seconds, he could do nothing but stare at the location where Oscar’s mow once was. He listened for a beacon to confirm that Oscar was still alive, but there was nothing but silence. Five seconds into this he awakened to the knowledge that he was charging into the midst of this battle zone. With no thought of what he was doing, Sawyer transitioned into combat mode and brought his guns up to the ready.

Sawyer was barely aware of his actions as he dove into the swarm of UFP spacefighters with both railguns spewing out repetitive volleys of projectiles in rapid succession. One UFP spacefighter after another came under the fire of his wrath. One, three, five UFP spacefighters disappeared under the weight of his volleys. Sawyer had no desire to leave the area. He danced his way through a torrent of crisscrossing return fire from UFP spacefighters. The high speed of his fall made him a hard target for the UFP spacefighters. It also made the UFP spacefighters too brief a target to fulfill his need for revenge. In his rage, Sawyer began to thrust against his direction of fall an instant after the last UFP spacefighter fell out of lethal range.

“Sawyer! Get out of there.”

CC’s strident call awakened Sawyer from an obsession to destroy all the UFP spacefighters that were contributors to Oscar’s death. He noted that CC’s sensor field was still interlinked with his and concluded that she had not left the vicinity. A renewed concern for her wellbeing caused him to shut down his thruster against his fall.

“Sawyer, come on. There’s nothing you can do for Oscar now. Please.”

CC’s earnest call held Sawyer in check for two seconds. At the end of this time, he changed his mow back into its shell configuration and steered away from the conflict at maximum thrust. Because of their different locations and the nearby threats, he and CC were soon too far apart to communicate across overlapping sensor fields. After thirty seconds of silence, Sawyer called out across a radio transmission.

“Steer a course towards Proxima Centauri,” Sawyer somberly commanded the remaining two members of his wing. “Form up with me at your earliest convenience.”

Without the overlay of Orion’s massive sensor field, the mows were hard pressed to pinpoint each other’s location. The command-and-control systems aboard the basestar marked locations by reading the circumference of all sensor fields within its scope and pinpointing the source vessel at its center. The Orion enabled communications between the mows through the overlay of its massive sensor field. Digital communications reverberated the interconnecting fields. The Orion made the connection to all the mows in its sphere possible, and it communicated the relative locations of all vessels in the same manner. This method gave the mow computers far less work to do and a far more information to work with.

In this situation, minus the assist of the Orion, the mows were so far apart that their sensor fields did not overlap. Because of this disconnect, they were dependent upon radio transmissions to communicate. Without triangulation, this method of communication only provided a general direction of the transmitter. By sending all the mows on a trajectory towards Proxima Centauri, he hoped to separate CC and Lazaro out from the swarm of nearby UFP spacefighters and bring them together.

Sawyer was seven minutes into this effort when he took note of a transmission that was emanating from a widely divergent direction. He knew that it was not coming from the Orion because the data was in a code that was foreign to his computer. It took him no more than five seconds of thought to deduce that the UFP force had divided into two groups and that one of them was pursuing the Orion. Sawyer knew from the beginning that a division such as this was a very real possibility. But it was a complication that he had hoped to not have to contend with. Getting back aboard the Orion became a decidedly harder problem because of this division and far more likely not to happen at all.

An additional twenty-seven minutes had passed when Sawyer connected with the first member of his wing. Initially, he was alerted to CC’s presence by a magnified visual of an object in the distance. The fact that it stood out as a solitary spacefighter gave him reason to believe it was one of his wing members. When their sensor fields overlapped a few minutes later his computer announced that it was a mow, and it belonged to Lieutenant Christine Chandler.

“Hey,” CC greeted in a decidedly gloomy voice.

“Hey,” Sawyer responded back in the same dismal tone. “You okay?”

“Yeah!”

Sawyer could think of nothing more to say beyond this, and CC was equally at a loss. They elected to say nothing more while their mows converged into a formation of two. Three minutes into this process Sawyer and CC took note of a solitary spacecraft falling ahead of a larger number of spacecrafts. The solitary spacecraft was moving at a speed that was twenty percent faster than the spacecrafts behind them. It took another thirty-nine minutes for Sawyer and CC to link up with Lazaro.

“Did you see Dixon and Pappas?” Sawyer queried behind their exchange of greetings.

“Dixon is gone,” Lazaro reported with an articulation of sorrow in her voice. “I was hoping Pappas was with you.”

Sawyer took a moment to digest this. CC filled in the silence with his take on their situation.

“I think this is it, Sawyer. I don’t see anyone else coming. We have to catch up with the Orion.”

“Chandler is right,” Lazaro supported an instant behind. “We have to go.”

Sawyer knew the truth of this before hearing it said. The weight of command held him back from saying it first. He dreaded the burden of being the one to decide to discontinue the wait for the last two members of this wing.

“Okay, let’s do it,” Sawyer instructed with feigned certitude.

With this order, Sawyer turned his wing towards the escape vector used by the Basestar Orion and began pursuit at maximum thrust.

In the original plan, Sawyer and his wing were to catch up with the Orion after it had reached its minimum time jump velocity or greater. The mows were expected to outpace the UFP spacefighters during this pursuit. At the speed that the Orion was traveling when the six mows were launched, it was calculated that the mows needed to engage with the pursuing UFP force for seven minutes. This disruption in the acceleration of the UFP force was expected to expand the speed differential between them and the basestar. It was calculated that the new differential would make it possible for the Orion to reach time jump velocity unmolested. But this plan was contingent upon all the UFP spacefighters remaining behind to deal with the mows for the whole of these seven minutes. It was calculated that a three-minute disruption in the UFP force’s acceleration would still give the Orion a good chance to reach minimum time jump velocity, albeit with no time to spare. But in this scenario, it was considered impractical to attempt retrieving the mows. The risk to the basestar was too great.

All efforts to intercept the three remaining mows by the stray groups of UFP spacefighters fell short twenty minutes earlier. The mows were too fast. They streaked through the clutch of the UFP space force before it could close around them. Nonetheless, the pursuing UFP spacefighters followed Sawyer and his wing into this new trajectory. After a short time of doing so, they abandoned all thoughts of firing on the mows. The distance between them steadily widened despite their best effort to catch them. A few minutes after the three mows formed up their pursuers came together into a loose collection far behind them. For the first time, with the help of magnified optics, Sawyer could assess the size of this UFP group. Through this analysis, he estimated that half of the UFP force broke off and continued to pursue the Orion. What he did not know was when this had happened.

“Do you see that, Commander?” Lazaro yelled out through their sensor field connection. “There’s got to be more than one-hundred UFP spacefighters missing.”

“Yeah,” Sawyer concurred solemnly. “They’re probably somewhere between here and the Orion.”

“That’s why we’re not dead,” Lazaro asserted. “Half their number broke away from the fight.”

“Do you think the Orion will wait for us?” CC questioned in a soft voice.

Sawyer had an answer for this, but he did not want to say it, especially not to CC.

“Those UFP spacefighters could be attacking the Orion right now,” Lazaro suggested with a glum delivery. “He’s not going to wait if the basestar is in jeopardy.”

“You can’t know that,” Sawyer retorted with a quick response. “The hard part is over with. We have to keep working the plan.”

“Oh man, get real!” Lazaro bellowed in response. “Work the plan? We’re screwed. Admiral Sloan is going to take off for Proxima Centauri and he’s not going to look back. We’re expendable.”

Sawyer noted the rage in Lazaro’s voice and suspected it was driven by fear. It was a condition that he sympathized with, but the impression of being doomed was not something he wanted CC to feel.

“You volunteered for this, Lazaro,” Sawyer admonished. “You’ve got no one to blame but yourself.”

“Yeah, I did,” Lazaro returned after a pause and with less of a temper. “But I didn’t volunteer to listen to you sugar coat our situation.”

“Sawyer is right,” CC asserted hesitantly. “We can’t worry about things that are ahead of what we have to do right now.”

Lazaro had no response to this. He had spent his rant and was embarrassed for the act. Because of this, he could think of nothing else to say or do except follow Sawyer’s lead. CC was equally amenable to this thinking. Over the next three minutes, they had nothing to say to each other. This all changed when a radio transmission came in from the Orion. The data embedded in the transmission communicated three pieces of information, Orion’s relative location and its speed. This information continued to update as the transmission streamed in. Little more than a minute later the transmission stopped.

“They jumped! They left us!”

Lazaro’s panicked outburst was the first response that passed between them after this data stream came to an end.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

It took Gruenberg one-hundred and eighteen minutes at maximum thrust to stop the fall of his battle group in the wrong direction. At the end of this time, he gave Eckhart a questioning look before verbalizing what he was thinking.

“The primary thrusters have been burning for the most part of seventeen hours. If we keep pushing them like this, it won’t be long before they start burning out.”

“I thought these things had a twenty-hour burn life at maximum power,” Eckhart argued back.

“That may be true straight off the factory floor,” Gruenberg countered. “But most of these spacefighters are one-year-old. And we’re pushing them to the far end of their capabilities.”

“Then push them to the far end,” Eckhart roared back. “I don’t want any more mistakes.”

Eckhart had reached the end of his patience with Gruenberg’s tactical wisdom. Nothing played out according to his assurances, and he could see nothing left that to make up for the loss. The only thing that Eckhart had left was his need to hurt the last vestige of the starcorps. He was determined to have that, and he wanted to be there when it happened.

The last report that Eckhart received from Captain McLaughlin was five minutes earlier. In it, he reported how much further the remaining three starcorp spacefighters had moved away from his pursuit. He was also told that the pilots of these spacefighters had not responded to numerous petitions for their surrender. Eckhart requested these reports at five-minute intervals or when some significant change occurred. When the next report came in it was more of the same, with one addition.

“General, the starcorp spacefighters have situated themselves in a trajectory straight towards you.”

Eckhart was initially taken aback by this report. His first thought was that the starcorp spacefighters were targeting his group. Two seconds later he dismissed this as an absurd thought. His battle group consisted of one-hundred and ten spacefighters. It made no sense for these three starcorp spacefighters to be on the offensive. His confusion came to an end when Gruenberg explained that they were following the path of the basestar.

“They’re trying to get back to the warship,” Eckhart comprehended out loud.

Two seconds behind this Gruenberg pointed out the finality of this situation for the benefit of those that may not have understood.

“They don’t know that we’re coming right at them. We’ve got them.”

Wilkinson had a complete understanding of what was occurring. His mind went to work on tactics they could use to exploit this situation almost from the instant that he heard Captain McLaughlin’s report. A second after Gruenberg’s elucidation he announced his preliminary assessment of the starcorp spacefighter’s situation.

“They’re perfect targets.” 

“There’s no need to kill them,” Ronald Kaplan shouted out with a shocked expression. “They have nowhere to go. Eventually, they’ll have to give up.”

“They’ve already had their chance,” Eckhart returned in a quick stern retort.

Ronald Kaplan was shocked by this response. But he knew better than to argue the point any further. Eckhart’s rage was in full bloom and he would have little tolerance for a debate that conflicted with his wishes. This would only serve to stoke the fire.

“They may have information we can use,” Peter Carr informed with a calm delivery.

“Everything that I wanted disappeared into nowhere,” Eckhart rifled back towards his Minister of State with a glare.

All present took this last remark as a declaration that there would be no quarter given to the four starcorp pilots. Carr was surprised to hear this. Gruenberg took it in with a look of expectation. Wilkinson’s face bordered on an expression of glee, and Ronald Kaplan digested it with a mixture of dismay and puzzlement.

Ronald’s confusion was not with Eckhart’s declaration. This entire situation seemed flawed to him in some way. His brain was locked in an effort to make sense of it.

“How long before lethal range?” Eckhart questioned Gruenberg in a commanding tone.

“Well,” Gruenberg commenced after a second of thought. “Technically we’re in lethal range night now.”

This answer took everyone by surprise. It was generally understood that lethal range was any distance that could be traversed by 10 projectiles in five seconds or less. The time stamp on the last transmission from Captain McLaughlin suggested that they were better than two hours away from that distance. The last calculation by the navigator put the time to intercept at One-hundred and fifty-nine minutes. The incongruity in these two statements had the minds of all present pondering what it was that they missed.

“Do you mind explaining that, General Gruenberg?” Eckhart questioned with a hint of exasperation.

Gruenberg responded to the query with his usual air of confidence.

“According to Captain McLaughlin’s last report, the three starcorp spacefighters are operating with their sensor fields at little more than lethal range distance. They’re putting the bulk of their power into their engines.”

Gruenberg paused to give weight to that report, and then he continued to explain.

“They’re falling away from Captain McLaughlin and his group,” Gruenberg elucidated with emphasis. “But they’re falling towards us.”

All present listened to this explanation like students listening to a lecture from their teacher.

“If we discharged a fusillade right now the projectiles will travel from the perimeter of their sensor fields to the spacefighters inside of two seconds.”

All present took a second to absorb and pondered this. Wilkinson beat the others to the obvious question.

“How do we target them?”

“We don’t have to,” Gruenberg snapped back with the answer. “Captain McLaughlin is doing that for us. We use the data from the sensor field that his group is projecting and triangulation to compute aim points.”

Gruenberg paused again to see if everyone understood this. When he was convinced that they did he finished his lecture with a closing remark.

“They’ll never see it coming.”

Once again Gruenberg looked to see if all comprehended the mechanics of what he said. Three seconds later he was convinced that they did. He then looked to Eckhart for instructions. This he received two seconds later.

“Do it.”

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Captain McLaughlin and his battle group had spent the sixty minutes before this moment executing the instructions he received from General Gruenberg. This was easy enough to do but maintaining the posture that his commanding officer wanted was destined to become impossible over time. That fact was the result of the expanding distance between his group and the three starcorp spacefighters he was pursuing. To accomplish the task of maintaining a sensor field about the three starcorp spacefighters, he allocated the job to one spacefighter at a time. He instructed the remainder of the group to turn their sensor fields down to the minimum and their thrusters up to the maximum.

By allocating this task to one spacefighter, Captain McLaughlin was ensuring that the remainder of the group was moving at their best speeds. When the spacefighter that was maintaining a sensor field about the three starcorp spacefighters fell too far behind, Captain McLaughlin assigned another spacefighter to the task. This he had to do four times. Just before the implementation of this system, the group was a little more than twenty minutes away from losing sensor field contact with the three mows. This system extended this time to eighty minutes. They were twenty minutes away from the end time of this process when Captain McLaughlin’s second in command vocalized his impatience.

“Do you think they’re still making calculations?”

“I think the General wants to get as close as he can,” Captain McLaughlin answered with a hint of uncertainty in his voice.

Captain McLaughlin’s uncertainty was not the product of a disbelief in this process. The mechanics of what they were doing was tried and true. But it did have the distinction of never having been done at these extremes. The targets that they were lining up were moving at one-tenth the speed of light and accelerating. The travel time of any projectile fired at this moment would exceed ten minutes. Computing a precise line from weapon to target meant factoring in the lag time in radio communications between the targeting computers in Captain McLaughlin’s battle group and Gruenberg’s. Performing these calculations was not beyond the capabilities of their computers, but the error needed only to be tiny to cause them to miss.

“If he waits much longer, we won’t be able to target them at all.” Captain McLaughlin’s second in command muttered with frustration.

“Relax, Lieutenant, the General knows what he’s doing.”

It was Captain McLaughlin’s suspicion that General Gruenberg was waiting for the last possible moment to commence his fusillade. This would minimize the effect of any flaw in the angle. To keep the starcorp pilots in the dark about what was coming, he knew that Gruenberg’s battle group had to commence firing before they were likely to see them via long range optics. Based on this thinking, he expected no more than ten minutes to pass before getting word that the fusillade had been discharged.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“What’s going on?” Eckhart questioned Wilkinson in a commanding tone.

It was not what was being said or done that was confusing Eckhart. It was the intense concentration and the prolonged silence. The tension among the flight crew was so high that it made Eckhart hesitant to disrupt their concentration.

“They’re waiting,” Wilkinson reported almost at a whisper.

“I can see that,” Eckhart grumbled back at near to a hushed voice. “But what are they waiting for?”

Eckhart’s rebuke gave Wilkinson a start. In response, he turned his full attention to the Prime Minister before giving his answer.

“We want to get as close as we can. At this distance, a miscalculation of one-one/thousandth of one percent could send the entire fusillade hundreds of miles off course.”

“So, when will we know for sure?” Eckhart challenged with a glare.

“When we hit the target,” Wilkinson answered after a second of thought.

Gruenberg was paying no attention to this conversation. He was studying a tactical display with great intensity. The display was situated on the large monitor at the front of the capsule. On it was a graphic of the locations of all spaceships involved in this upcoming engagement. Speed and distances were constantly being adjusted to match the changes in each spaceship’s disposition. The silence in the capsule held for another seven minutes. At the end of this time, Gruenberg looked to his weapons control officer and commanded a report with a word, “Lieutenant.”

“I think we’ve got them, General,” the Lieutenant barked out with a sharp delivery. “If they stay on this course, they’re dead.”

“Communications,” Gruenberg called out with a look towards his communications officer. “Open a channel to the battle group.”

The communications officer complied with this order behind a terse, “yes sir.” As soon as this connection was made Gruenberg began to bark out orders to all spacefighters within his battle group.

“Shut down thrusters—now.”

Gruenberg paused to see if all had complied with this order. When he saw that they had, he spoke again.

“Bring primary weapons up to full power and lock on to the aim point. Set primary for a thirty-second fusillade. I want a go transmission when ready.” 

The communications officer turned to Gruenberg one minute later and reported that all spacefighters were at the ready. Immediately behind this, Gruenberg turned to Eckhart and gave him a questioning look. Eckhart answered the question in a gruff voice.

“Do it!”

Gruenberg hesitated for just a moment. At the end of this, he transmitted a one-word order to all the spacefighters in his battle-group.

“Fire!”

The fusillade from the one-hundred and ten spacefighters in Gruenberg’s battlegroup spewed out in streams. From a distance, the tightly formed battlegroup looked like a single vessel discharging a shower of electric sparks. Each spark appeared to wink out an instant after discharging into the black of space. This continued for exactly thirty seconds, and then it stopped.

“Eighteen minutes to target,” the weapons control officer shouted out after the last projectile was fired.

“Send word to Captain McLaughlin,” Gruenberg dictated to his communications officer. “Fusillade in route, disperse.”

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

Sawyer, CC, and Lazaro were one-hundred and eight minutes into their flight from their pursuers when the sensor fields that enveloped them disappeared from their sensors. Sawyer had been watching the UFP spacefighters behind them with long range optics. By this means all that he could detect was glints of light against the black backdrop of space. He had no way of knowing how far away they were or how quickly they were moving away from them. His own sensor field was too shallow to envelop them. Because of this inability, he could only guess that they were expanding their distance at a rapid pace. The fact that they continued to envelop them for so long had him more than a little worried. CC had her concerns, as well.

“Sawyer?” CC called out across their overlapping sensor fields.

“Yeah?”

“I’m scared,” CC advised with bated breath. “I think we should change our trajectory.”

“We can’t. They’ll catch us if we turn.”

This reply did nothing to relieve CC’s fears. The black of space in front of her was far more frightening than the spacefighters behind.

“Chandler is right,” Lazaro argued. “They’re doing something.”

“Look at the clock,” Sawyer encouraged. “We have to keep going.”

Lazaro took a moment to consider Sawyer’s instruction. CC took advantage of it the silence to speak in a tearful voice.

“I don’t want to die, Sawyer. I don’t want to die out here.”

“We’re not going to die, CC,” Sawyer returned with insistence in his tone. “I promise. We just have to keep going.”

CC was still not relieved by this promise, but she was embarrassed by her performance. This motivated her to take a moment to reconstitute her resolve. At the end of this time, she spoke to Sawyer on a different subject.

“I love you, Sawyer.”

“What?” Sawyer questioned back in a hurry and with a surprised inflection.

“I was always in love you, from the first moment I saw you. I hid it because I didn’t want you to know. You don’t have to love me back. I just wanted you to hear it in case I don’t get a chance to say it later.”

Sawyer did not know how to respond to this. He knew that he was attracted to CC and that his feelings for her exceeded what he felt for his other friends. But in his mind, he thought of himself as just a teenager. He was not sure if he should know how to be in love with a girl. In thinking about it at that moment, he believed it possible that his feelings for CC could be defined as love. But the thought of saying it did not feel right to him. It was too easy given their present situation. He feared that it would come across as insincere given the fact that they could both be killed within the next few minutes.

“Guys, we don’t have time for this,” Lazaro spoke up with an intonation of shock. “We need to do something. We’ve been on this line for too long.”

“We stay the course,” Sawyer insisted in a stern voice.

Lazaro’s concern that the group of spacefighters behind had been targeting them for a second group ahead was shared by Sawyer. He had considered this possibility almost from the beginning, and his belief in it grew with every minute their pursuers manage to keep their sensor field around them. This belief was fueled by his understanding that these sensor fields were huge power drains. Given the amount of energy they had to be expending on them, their continued pursuit only made sense if they were providing directions for the second group that was somewhere in front of them. It was for this reason that Sawyer believed that they were thrusting into a kill box.

Despite this fear, Sawyer believed that they had to continue forward. He knew that they had no other choice. If they changed their direction, if they turned, if they ran, he knew that all would be lost no matter what they did.

“Sawyer!” CC yelled out with an inflection of terror. “They’re turning.”

Sawyer had already noted that their pursuers were altering their trajectory. Using long range optics, he could see the glint of light reflecting off the spacefighters behind them begin to move off on a new trajectory. He knew that this could only mean one of two things, they were giving up, or they were getting out of the way. Sawyer knew that the former was more wishful thinking than anything else.

“Sawyer!” CC cried out in a tearful voice.

“CC, look at the clock. Look at the clock,” Sawyer implored in a hurry. “Just a little further.”

“We’re not going to make it,” Lazaro implored with a hint of hysterics.

“Yes, we will,” Sawyer contradicted with a sharp delivery.

Sawyer’s major concern at this moment was for CC’s state of mind. It hurt him to hear her so frightened. But in his mind, it was too late to do anything else. He knew they would lose their only chance at escape if they turned. By directing her thoughts towards their only option, he hoped to divert her from the thinking that they were doomed.

The clock that Sawyer spoke of was a timer in the top left corner of his, CC’s and Lazaro’s, visor. As he spoke, it raced down to just under a minute before zero. CC’s attention turned towards the timer the instant that Sawyer spoke of it. She watched it count down with a mixture of hope and fear in her expression. She knew that her salvation rested on what did or did not come to pass when the timer hit zero. She could think of nothing to say or do as she watched each second tick away. After a long wait, by CC’s perception, the timer reached ten seconds, and then five, and then zero. Suddenly, an alarm blared as the digits 0:00 flickered off and on. CC’s breathing stopped as she waited and waited. Two seconds, three seconds, four seconds went by with nothing happening other than the alert signaling around her. Suddenly, the mixture of the alarm and the wait became more than she could bare, and she screamed out the one word that was fixed in her mind.

“Sawyer!”

It was in this instant that a burst of energy registered on the monitor directly in her mow’s line of fall. The sight of it shocked her into silence. At first her mow’s computer registered it as an anomaly. Two seconds later it was marked with the tag “RG01UTC2182 Basestar Orion.” It reappeared in the exact location where it disappeared from, and it was moving along the same trajectory and at the same velocity that it had been when it disappeared. CC let out a gasp of relief.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“Somebody tell me something,” Joshua yelled out to his crew.

The Command Capsule crew of the Orion Basestar appeared to be operating at a hectic pace. All inside were searching their monitors and adjusting the displays as quickly as they could. It took another few seconds of this before someone had a reply to Joshua.

“I found one—wait—no, three, I have three mows approaching from behind.”

“Confirmed,” a second crewman shouted out, “three mows coming up fast from the rear.”

Joshua was shocked by these reports. He hesitated for a moment to assimilate the information. Three out of six, this news was a relief and disheartening. He expected worst and wished for more. He shortly recovered from his dismay and reasserted his authority with a loudly spoken command.

“Get them inside, now!”

Joshua’s command had no visible effect on the level of activity in the Command Capsule. Everyone appeared to be intensely attentive to their duties. Even as he spoke the communications officer was in the process of establishing a radio link with the mows. A second crewman called out the suggestion that they should reduce velocity to speed up retrieval of the mows.

“Negative,” Joshua countered in a sharp voice. “Maintain current velocity and trajectory. Open docking bay doors at the last moment.”

Joshua had no idea where the UFP forces were or what they were doing. Because of this ignorance, he was reluctant to back off from their time jump velocity.

“Sir, should I extend our sensor field?” Another crewman questioned.

“Negative!” Joshua retorted without hesitation.

Shutting down the sensor field to make a second jump was an expenditure of time he did not want.

“How long before they’re on board?” Joshua questioned his docking bay officer with a quick turn of his head in his direction.

“Three minutes, give or take thirty seconds,” the docking officer reported with some apprehension.

Joshua gave no importance to this imprecise measure. He knew that an exact moment of docking was not possible. His reason for asking was to get a time frame for the recovery. An instant after hearing this report Joshua shouted out another order to his docking bay officer.

“As soon as they’re across the threshold I want that door shut.”

“Roger that, sir.”

It took just under three minutes for the three mows to cross the threshold of Orion’s docking bay. The doors were not fully open when they began to close. It took another thirty seconds for the mows to lock into the nearest docking station. The docking bay doors were sealed shut another eight seconds after that.

“Bay doors are sealed, Admiral,” the docking bay officer shouted out the instant he saw it on his monitor. “Anti-gravity generator is powering up.”

“Start making preparations for a time jump.”

Joshua bellowed out this order an instant behind the report from the docking bay officer. Five seconds later a crewman reported that all segments of the basestar were reinforced with zero gravity fields.

“Initiate time jump, now!”

Three seconds later the Orion faded out of existence beneath an aura of white light that dissipated as it bloomed outwards. One-hundred and forty-four seconds later a hail of UFP warheads pierced through the space where it once was.

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

“General, incoming message from Captain McLaughlin.”

“Put a video box on the main monitor,” Gruenberg instructed with a mild look of surprise.

Gruenberg expected the fusillade to reach their targets in another three minutes. What Captain McLaughlin needed to report ahead of this time was a mystery to him. But he was curious to find out and elected to play the video message on a segment of the main screen at the front of the capsule.

“General Gruenberg, the starcorp warship, it's back. It just appeared from out of nowhere. It’s falling on a line straight for you. The three spacefighters are closing on it fast. What are your orders?”

At the instant that Captain McLaughlin said the words, “the warship, it's back,” all but one person in the cockpit perked up with looks of surprise. It was the one thing that none of them were expecting and only one of them understood. For Kaplan, this event immediately made sense to him. He knew what was happening, and he knew why and how. And it was wholly unanticipated. Abandoning the 6 mows never made sense to him if it was not necessary, but he never considered alerting anyone to his thinking. He did not want the blood of those starcorp pilots on his hands. After hearing Captain McLaughlin’s report a mixed expression of surprise and relief spread across Ronald Kaplan’s face.

“Order him to attack!” Eckhart screamed after a moment of stunned silence.

Gruenberg did nothing. His mind was still trying to make sense of this quandary. He was still pondering it three seconds later when Eckhart screamed at him again.

“Do something!”

“He can’t,” Wilkinson yelled out in defense of Gruenberg. “That fusillade is due to pass through there within the next five minutes.”

That reply alerted Eckhart to the possibility that the basestar could become an unintended victim of this barrage.

“Will it hit them?” Eckhart questioned his Minister of Defense with a look of hopeful excitement.

“We’ll know in six minutes,” Gruenberg spoke up with a shake of his head and a look of dismay.

Gruenberg had no more to say behind this. He knew there was nothing to do but wait for the second report from Captain McLaughlin. This came less than a minute later.

“General Gruenberg, it’s gone. The warship collected the three starcorp spacefighters and then it just vanished. It’s gone.”

Gruenberg had, by this time, figured out what had happened. But this knowledge did nothing to appease his feeling of frustration for having missed it beforehand. He said nothing as he rolled this failure around in his head and examined it from every angle. Eckhart’s annoyance with this silence was quick to come, and he yelled out a question to anyone that could give him an answer.

“What the fuck just happened?”

In the absence of another taker, Ronald Kaplan rose to the task of providing an answer to the question.

“We flew right past them,” Kaplan spoke with a chuckle and a shake of his head.

“What?” Eckhart challenged with a roar.

“We went right past them,” Kaplan returned with a smile. “The starcorp warship, it didn’t jump back in time. It jumped forward in time, and we flew past it—They’re gone.”

Eckhart took a moment to assimilate this before reacting to it with a one-word response delivered at a shout.

“Fuck!”

_~~~~~Line Break~~~~~_

When the basestar commenced its time jump, the first thought of Sawyer, CC and Lazaro was to get to a space capsule as quick as possible. They did not know what to expect and a space capsule was the appropriate place to be during any launch. They had no time to rejoice over their survival or express their relief at seeing each other. After exiting their mows, they flew down the docking bay tunnels at their best speeds, one after the other. Lazaro arrived at the transport pod lobby first. CC and Sawyer came into the lobby two seconds later. It was only after seeing CC split off for a separate transport tube that Sawyer gave thought to keeping her by his side.

“No,” Sawyer corrected after grabbing CC by the arm.

CC’s feet jackknifed out ahead of her in response to Sawyer’s grasp. Her inertia pulled Sawyer off his trajectory toward the closest transport tube. He reached up and grabbed a hand hold to stop his drift. As he did this, he pulled CC back towards him. She made no effort to fight this despite the look of surprise on her face. She reached up with her free hand and took hold of the arm that Sawyer was using to tether her. After a strong pull with his other arm, Sawyer threw the both of them towards the transport pod door that he was initially trying to get to. As soon as he touched the control panel to the transport tube the transport pod door opened. Sawyer gave CC a soft sling through the doorway. He followed her through a second behind. They were quick to position themselves in front of a seat so that the suction it produced could pull them into it. The door to the transport pod closed as soon as they were settled. The pod began to move an instant later.

Sawyer and CC were aboard the Basestar Orion and were in route to a space capsule. Lazaro had commandeered a separate transport pod and was on his way to his assigned space capsule. The Orion had jumped out of real space/time before the three of them had gotten out of their mows. CC had no idea why Sawyer had pulled her into his transport pod. Her space capsule was in a different location within the hub of the basestar. But she was not inclined to question his decision to pull her along with him. She was grateful for every second she got to spend with him. It was a relief for her to be in the same compartment with him and not partitioned by separate mows and empty space. Sawyer was equally pleased to have CC in his company. When the transport arrived at its destination Sawyer extended a hand towards her as he spoke.

“Come on.”

CC took his hand and followed his lead. They floated out the open transport pod door and into the antechamber outside of Sawyer’s space capsule. Hand in hand, they floated over to the hatch. Sawyer unlocked it by touching his com-link to the display pad beside the hatch. The red light that bordered the display pad turned green. Sawyer pulled open the hatch and sent CC into the capsule ahead of him. He pulled the hatch closed when he followed her inside.

Once inside the capsule, CC began the process of searching for an empty seat. There were several, but she was reluctant to take one before knowing where Sawyer’s acceleration pod was. The eyes of everyone inside the capsule were on her as she hesitated there. Everyone inside knew that she and Sawyer were two of the six pilots that left the basestar several hours earlier. No one knew what to say or how to react. The event did not seem to warrant a celebration, but all were pleased to see them alive.

CC was still floating just inside the capsule when Sawyer finished reclosing the hatch. She turned back towards him to see what he wanted her to do. Their eyes focused in on each other for the first time since their arrival. Sawyer froze for a moment. His mind had not plotted out what he should do beyond this point. They floated there for half a dozen seconds and did nothing but look into eyes of the other. At the end of this time, Sawyer awakened from his trance and acted.

“Over here,” Sawyer instructed as he reacquired CC’s hand.

With CC in tow, Sawyer pushed off towards his acceleration pod. Everyone followed them with their eyes as they floated across the capsule. When he got to his acceleration pod, Sawyer climbed down into it with one hand while holding onto CC with the other. It took him three seconds to negotiate the maneuver. He ignored the seat restraints. When his lower body was inside the cubicle, he braced his feet and legs against the sides of the pod to anchor him inside. After this, he pulled CC into the cubicle with him. She followed his lead without complaint or surprise. She clasped her arms about Sawyer’s torso as she settled into the space. Her head came to rest on his shoulder. With a press of a button, Sawyer extended the lid to the cubicle two-thirds of the way up. This prevented them from floating out of it. When all of this was done, Sawyer began to settle in for the journey to Proxima Centauri. He secured CC beneath his embrace, entangled a leg with hers, rested his cheek against the top of her head and sighed with relief that they were safe at last. Several seconds later he whispered the thought that bloomed up within his mind from out of nowhere.

“I love you.”

CC reacted to his declaration by snuggling in a little tighter and closing her eyes. 

The End


End file.
